MONDAY, MARCH 20, 1972

The House met at 2:00 p.m.

Prayers.

MR. SPEAKER: The Honourable the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. D. BARRETT (Leader of the Opposition): Mr. Speaker, I wish to announce to the House today the arrival of a brand new New Democrat in the Province of British Columbia. We're pleased and proud of our second Member for Vancouver East (Mr. Williams) who became a father Saturday of a daughter that weighed 7 lb. 10 oz.

MR. SPEAKER: The Honourable the Provincial Secretary.

HON. W.D. BLACK (Provincial Secretary): Mr. Speaker, when it comes to upstaging now, I think that's going to happen because, Mr. Speaker, I want to welcome to this Province a brand new Socred — 7 lb. 13 oz. (Laughter). Mother doing well, daughter doing well, father doing as well as could be expected.

As a consequence of that this is the first time Mrs. Black and I have been grandparents and I'd like to pass the cigars around to the boys. You give those to the boys over in the Opposition side to pass around. There are some who do not believe in that type of pollution. If so, I'll pass the candy around (Laughter). Congratulations to my friend opposite. I went through that many years ago, I know how he suffered.

MR. R.A. WILLIAMS (Vancouver East): Mr. Speaker, I'd just say this is probably the most effective way to beat the generation gap. Thank you.

MR. SPEAKER: The Honourable Member for Cowichan-Malahat.

MR. R.M. STRACHAN (Cowichan-Malahat): I would just like the House to welcome from Chemainus the group of senior secondary students who are beginning the day very well by these felicitations. I don't know that it's a great example to be passing cigars around on both sides of the House but nevertheless, I'd ask you to welcome the students for today's proceedings.

MR. SPEAKER: The Honourable the second Member for Vancouver–Point Grey.

MR. G.B. GARDOM (Vancouver–Point Grey): Mr. Speaker, I should certainly like to say apropos the remarks of the first two speakers today when one referred to a Social Credit and the other referred to a New Democratic party. The people are born Liberals and they die Liberals. Sometimes in between there they stray a little.

MR. SPEAKER: The Honourable Member for Skeena.

MR. D.G. LITTLE (Skeena): Mr. Speaker, I have an announcement to make of interest, I know, to the sporting world. On Saturday last I was with yourself and the Hon. Minister of Labour along with the second Member for Victoria and would you believe it the second Member for Victoria made a hole-in-one at Oak Bay.

MR. SPEAKER: The Hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of privilege.

Mr. Speaker, my point of privilege relates to actions taken by this government and specifically by the Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Bennett) and the Minister of Education (Hon. Mr. Brothers) who are in my opinion in contempt of Parliament.

On March 17, 1972, after this House arose, an edition of the March 17, 1972 Vancouver Sun arrived which had in it an advertisement placed by the Government of British Columbia dealing with a matter presently before this House.

I refer, Mr. Speaker, to page 10 of the aforementioned edition of the Vancouver Sun, an example of which I now hold before you.

It is an ad placed by the government intituled "Ontario Has Education Problems Too"….the Government of the Province of British Columbia.

The placing of this ad, Mr. Speaker, is a grave violation of all that we hold sacred relative to the due parliamentary process. This ad was placed before this House had completed second reading of Bill No. 3, and, is a direct reflection on that debate.

We think, Mr. Speaker, that the government's action in placing this ad is an arrogant disregard for the traditions, usages, authority and dignity of the Legislature. It is reprehensible that the government would use public funds to further its case on a debate that is not yet complete in this House. It is reprehensible that the government would use public funds to subvert the deliberations of this Legislature.

I therefore move, Mr. Speaker, seconded by the Member for Burnaby-Edmonds (Mr. Dowding) that: This House regrets that the government has seen fit in the present stage of proceedings on Bill No. 3, at a time when it is being debated on second reading, to state a case by advertisement published Friday, March 17, 1972 in the Vancouver Sun, page 10, thereby derogating from the privileges and constitutional authority of this House and thereby reflecting upon the integrity of our parliamentary institution with a view to seeking to influence the debate.

Wherefore the following Members are hereby appointed as a committee on privileges, to whit Messrs. Price, Mussallem, Marshall, Macdonald, Dowding and Gardom, to determine whether or not a breach of privileges of this House took place and a contempt has been committed upon the House.

Mr. Speaker, I refer to you references from Dawson on parliamentary procedure in Canada pages 50 and 51 and I refer you to the 16th edition of May on contempt, page 43, and privilege, page 380.

MR. SPEAKER: The Honourable Member has placed a great deal of evidence before the Chair which I think he and other Members will realise must be reviewed by the Chair before we can find the motion to be in or out of order.

My immediate reaction is that the setting up of a committee, for example, as contained within the motion would in itself, not having notice, require leave. Nevertheless, I think with the House's permission I would like some time to review the matters placed before the Chair and to bring my viewpoint in at the earliest opportunity.

MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, I bring this matter to your

[ Page 858 ]

attention without notice because of the sense of urgency.

(1) The ad could appear again before the completion of the debate. (2) This is the first opportunity that I have had since the placing of the ad to bring it to your attention.

MR. SPEAKER: Would the House give the Speaker time then to research the material and to bring in a ruling accordingly? Is it agreed?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Agreed.

MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, I would prefer a recess now due to the fact that the government has indicated that we will be proceeding to legislation this afternoon and your decision may materially affect the debate on that legislation. Perhaps a 15-minute recess would be in order.

MR. SPEAKER: I think that 15 minutes would be hardly adequate time to give the Speaker on a matter like this. It's a courtesy that's often extended to the Chair to give some time to review matters that are placed before it and surely the Chair isn't asking for any special concessions in this particular case.

MR. BARRETT: Fine, I would hope then the government would not call the bill until the decision.

HON. W.A.C. BENNETT (Premier): The government is going to call the bill forthwith.

MR. BARRETT: Well, Mr. Speaker, with the government intention it places an obvious sense of urgency on a decision from yourself. I don't see how we can debate the bill without a decision from you, sir.

HON. L.R. PETERSON (Attorney General): Mr. Speaker, surely an editorial published in the Province of Ontario about their system and reproduced here cannot affect legislation that's before this House.

MR. SPEAKER: I'm not prepared to bring in a ruling on the matter of privilege or on the attendant motion without having been given some time. Now, how much time I really don't know, having not seen the material previously but 15 minutes is completely inadequate and I would think we'd need considerable more time on this.

It may be possible to have the Deputy Speaker take the Chair for some time while the House carries on so that we might be in a position to consider the matter. But even then it's going to take some time.

MR. BARRETT: Well, Mr. Speaker, in view of the threat of the Premier to call the bill…

HON. MR. BENNETT: No. It's just straight statement of facts.

MR. BARRETT: …forthwith, Mr. Speaker, I feel that if I have assurance from the government that the bill would not be called while you were deliberating, then certainly I would appreciate that.

If that courtesy is not extended when we are waiting for a Speaker's ruling on such an important matter as abuse of the privileges then Mr. Speaker, I have no other option than to move a one-hour adjournment. Otherwise, Mr. Speaker, the whole influence of that debate will be under …

MR. SPEAKER: That is a matter for the House to decide. Just how a question should be proposed on a request like this I don't clearly know. Would the House be at ease for a moment or two?

Order, please! It has been the long-established practice of the House that Mr. Speaker be given the right to reserve decisions on points that are placed before him. I can think of no other time when this leave has been refused and therefore we're rather breaking new ground here today.

Nevertheless, I must hold in view of the well-established precedents that have gone before that I will require time to discuss and to study the matters that have been placed before me. So on that basis I must so rule. The Honourable the first Member for Vancouver–Point Grey.

MR. P.L. McGEER (Vancouver–Point Grey): Mr. Speaker, may I draw your attention to standing order 26 which says: "Whenever any matter of privilege arises it shall be taken into consideration immediately."

Now, Mr. Speaker, I think the Leader of the Opposition has raised a very valid breach of privilege which is going to materially affect the debate which will take place this afternoon.

MR. SPEAKER: One moment please….

MR. McGEER: If you postpone your decision…

MR. SPEAKER: One moment, will you, please?

MR. McGEER: …it only compounds the problem.

MR. SPEAKER: A prima facie case of breach of privilege has not as yet been established. All that the Chair is requesting is that it have time to consider the matter that has been raised by the Hon. the Leader of the Opposition. That is all. No prima facie case has been established.

MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, I agree with you that there has only been a prima facie case but in all instances before a matter has received your ruling it is a prima facie case. It cannot be a case or a non-case until we have your ruling. Again therefore I must go back to number 26 which says: "Whenever a matter of privilege arises it shall be taken into consideration immediately."

I have no objection, Mr. Speaker, to your taking the time necessary except, Mr. Speaker, I've been faced with government arrogance that insists…

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. BARRETT: …it's going to pursue the bill…

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please! The Hon. Member is not in order.

MR. BARRETT: …in face of the matter that I've raised….

MR. SPEAKER: The Hon. Member is not in order.

Interjection by an Hon. Member.

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MR. BARRETT: Is your ruling, Mr. Speaker?

MR. SPEAKER: This matter has not been studied by the Chair and therefore I'm requiring time to see whether or not a prima facie case exists. From the material that the Honourable Member has placed before me, including the quotation from Dawson and a quotation from May, I think it is less than reasonable to expect that I would give an outright answer.

My first impression from the content of the motion — that a committee on privileges be struck — would on that basis alone, in my mind, put it out of order unless unanimous consent were given by the House because leave would have to be given to set such a committee up.

Nevertheless, I would like to examine all of the material that was placed before the Chair in order to come in with a fairly comprehensive decision. Already a fairly comprehensive decision has been dealt with by the Chair on a previous occasion. I would like to review that decision and to review other material that has been placed before me, that is all.

MR. BARRETT: I have no objection to that except the fact that I'm being confronted with the decision by the government to proceed with a matter that I have raised in question and that's….

MR. SPEAKER: This has no bearing on the matter of privilege that the Honourable Member has raised.

MR. BARRETT: Well, I regret that we cannot in a gentlemanly way give the Speaker the time to make his ruling, without that the threat by the Premier proceeding with the matter.

MR. STRACHAN: Discourtesy by the Premier.

MR. BARRETT: It's most discourteous.

MR. STRACHAN: Mr. Speaker….

MR. SPEAKER: All right.

MR. STRACHAN: In order to help you, I believe, I would ask you to cast your mind back to a previous occasion in this House when we were discussing a matter of privilege. A matter raised by the first Member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Capozzi) affecting the Member for Burnaby-Edmonds (Mr. Dowding) and at that time I believe — as I recollect it — you yourself called an immediate recess in order to check on the matter.

MR. SPEAKER: As I recall it, it was on the final day of the session.

MR. STRACHAN: Yes.

MR. SPEAKER: And the reason a recess was called was because we couldn't put it off to another day.

MR. STRACHAN: Nevertheless on your own volition, Mr. Speaker….

MR. SPEAKER: But this wasn't predicated on standing order 26, let me assure the Honourable Member on that point.

MR. STRACHAN: Yes, but it was on the instance of the Speaker. The House has really no knowledge, the Speaker has no knowledge when the House is going to be completed or whether or not that was the last day. That was an assumption which may or may not have been….

MR. SPEAKER: We're getting into another argument.

MR. STRACHAN: A decision made by the Speaker, to have a recess to consider it, I am asking you to remember that precedent which you yourself set some years ago.

MR. SPEAKER: The Chair must be now in a position to rule that time will be required to bring an answer in on the matters raised and not even yet placed before it. So if the Honourable Member would pass the material up to the Speaker, we'll have an opportunity to examine it.

AN HON. MEMBER: Mr. Speaker, I would just like to say that I have no knowledge of being nominated for any committee and I wish to disassociate myself from it.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

Introduction of bills.

MR. SPEAKER: The Honourable the Minister of Municipal Affairs.

HON. D.R.J. CAMPBELL (Minister of Municipal Affairs): Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to submit a message from his Honour the Lieutenant-Governor.

AN ACT TO AMEND THE
MUNICIPALITIES ENABLING AND INVALIDATING ACT

MR_ SPEAKER: The Lieutenant-Governor transmits herewith a bill intituled An Act to Amend the Municipalities Enabling and Invalidating Act and recommends the same to the legislative assembly. Dated at Government House March 20, 1972.

House in committee on Bill No. 92. On the recommendation of the committee, Bill No. 92 introduced, read a first time and ordered to be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting after today.

HON. MR. PETERSON: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Minister of Lands, Forests and Water Resources I have the honour to present a message from his Honour the Lieutenant Governor.

AN ACT TO AMEND THE
POLLUTION CONTROL ACT, 1967

MR. SPEAKER: The Lieutenant-Governor transmits herewith a bill intituled An Act to Amend the Pollution Control Act, 1967 and recommends the same to the legislative assembly. Dated at Government House March 20, 1972.

House in committee on Bill No. 102. On the recommendation of the committee, Bill No. 102 introduced, read a first time and ordered to be placed on orders of the

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day for second reading at the next sitting after today.

Orders of the day.

HON. W.A.C. BENNETT (Premier): Mr. Speaker, I move we proceed to public bills and orders. Adjourned debate on second reading of Bill No. 3.

Interjections by Hon. Members.

MR. SPEAKER: I'm sorry, was there a question from the Members on the matter of proceeding to public bills?

MR. R.A. WILLIAMS (Vancouver East): Yes, I'd like the advice of the Chair, Mr. Speaker.

HON. MR. BENNETT: It's government day, Mr. Speaker. Don't need leave….

MR. R.A. WILLIAMS: I'm simply unsure about the motion with respect to leave being granted, and I'd appreciate your advice.

HON. MR. BENNETT: It's government day.

MR. SPEAKER: Leave is required when the House proceeds directly to any other part of the orders of the day than the committee of supply which has priority attached to it.

Therefore even on government day the Chair requests leave to move from the beginning of the introduction of the orders of the day, directly to consideration of bills.

Interjection by an Hon. Member.

MR. SPEAKER: The Chair has already asked for leave — we'll ask for it again. The motion was that we proceed directly to public bills and orders. Shall leave be granted?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: No!

MR. SPEAKER: Leave has not been granted.

HON. MR. BENNETT: Then we move to committee of supply, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Committee of supply. Mr. Chairman.

House in committee of supply. The committee rose, reported progress and asked leave to sit again.

HON. MR. BENNETT: Mr. Speaker, I move the House proceed to public bills and orders. Mr. Speaker, adjourned debate on Bill No. 3.

MR. D. BARRETT (Leader of the Opposition): The question wasn't put to the House.

MR. SPEAKER: What motion?

MR. BARRETT: I called for a division in committee and I wasn't even given that by the Chairman.

MR. SPEAKER: What was the division on in committee?

MR. BARRETT: The division in committee on the motion that the committee rise and report progress. The committee Chairman never even put the question. We asked for a division.

Interjections by Hon. Members.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. P.L. McGEER (Vancouver–Point Grey): Are you ruling on the division or has that been disposed of, Mr. Speaker?

MR. SPEAKER: No, the House has no knowledge of what has transpired in the committee and the Honourable the Leader of the Opposition tells me that a division was called.

MR. G.H. DOWDING (Burnaby-Edmonds): Then how did you know when to take the Chair?

MR. SPEAKER: By being reported to by the Chairman. The Honourable Member knows perfectly well how the Speaker got back into the Chair.

One moment please. The Honourable first Member for Vancouver–Point Grey.

MR. McGEER: Mr. Speaker.

Interjections by Hon. Members.

MR. SPEAKER: I think the Honourable Member is on a point of order.

MR. McGEER: Point of order. If I could just ask Mr. Speaker this. We went to public bills and orders, Mr. Speaker, without leave. But we have not proceeded through motions and adjourned debates on motions. And my question Mr. Speaker is, may we proceed to public bills and orders? I have orders of the day and we go to motions and adjourned debates on motions or is that…?

MR. SPEAKER: I think the Honourable Member would be the first to agree that in analyzing the motions and adjourned debates on motions that this is not government business but rather the business of private members. He brings up an excellent point because it's been a source of concern to the Chair, that possibly the motions and adjourned debates on motions should be classified into government motions and adjourned debates on those motions, and private members' motions and adjourned debates on those motions — which is the practice of other parliaments. It's an excellent point, one with which the Chair cannot at this time concur because of the content of the motions which are considered more private business really, than they are government business.

Government, as you well know, requires consent to be able to call a motion within the motions that are on the order paper.

AN HON. MEMBER: Well, there is one on tile order paper that could be called first.

MR. SPEAKER: Yes, it could be.

MR. R.M. STRACHAN (Cowichan-Malahat): Well, my

[ Page 861 ]

point of order, Mr. Speaker, is that the Chairman made an erroneous report to you. He failed to report to you that a division was called on the motion that the committee now rise. I would suggest that you call the Chairman back and request from him a true report of what happened and perhaps an accounting as to why he didn't call the division that was called for on that motion. He gave an erroneous report to you.

MR. SPEAKER: Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the House advises that a division was called in the committee which was not taken. Could you possibly explain this to me?

MR. CHAIRMAN: The motion was put that the committee report progress and ask leave to sit again. Someone called a division after that motion was put. I recorded the motion.

Interjections by Hon. Members.

MR. SPEAKER: I think possibly for matter of clarification, Mr. Chairman, you might take the Chair again and clarify the matter. If a division is called after the motion is put, certainly Members are entitled to and should have a division on the motion.

You might consult with the clerk as to whether or not a motion is capable of being made on a motion for the committee rising.

House in committee of supply. The committee rose, reported progress, and asked leave to sit again.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Speaker, a division arose in committee on the motion that the committee rise and ask leave to sit again. The committee asked leave to have that division recorded.

MR. SPEAKER: The House will deal first of all with the division that took place in the committee which requires leave in order to be recorded in the Journals. Shall leave be granted?

Leave not granted.

HON. MR. BENNETT: Mr. Speaker, I move the House proceed to public bills and orders, adjourned debate on second reading of Bill No. 3.

MR. SPEAKER: The Honourable the first Member for Vancouver–Point Grey on a point of order.

MR. McGEER: On a point of order, I know we raised this question and you attempted to deal with it by saying that there are some government motions and some nongovernmental motions. Standing order No. 25 states that the ordinary daily routine of business in the House shall be as follows: Prayers, presenting petitions, reading and receiving petitions, presenting reports by standing and special committees, motions and adjourned debates on motions, then questions put by Members, and introduction of bills.

Then it says on government days which are Monday and Tuesday you have public bills and orders. So according to our standing order No. 25, motions and adjourned debates on motions precede public bills and orders without leave of the House being given. I, therefore, move that we proceed to motions and adjourned debates on motions, precede public bills and orders without leave of the House being given. I, therefore, move that we proceed to motions and adjourned debates on motions, which is No. 2.

MR. SPEAKER: The Honourable Member is speaking to a point of order which must be dealt with first of all. The Honourable the Attorney General.

HON. MR. PETERSON: Mr. Speaker, I'd like to call your attention to standing order No. 27, sub-section 2 which would seem to cover the matter. Whenever government business has precedence, government orders may be called in such sequence as the government may think fit. The right is reserved to the administration of placing government orders at the head of the list on every day except Wednesday and Thursday. I think that deals with the matter specifically.

MR. SPEAKER: The Honourable Member for Burnaby Edmonds.

MR. G.H. DOWDING (Burnaby-Edmonds): Mr. Speaker, I also point to the order paper and motion No. 26 which is a cabinet Minister's motion, which in the order of motions would be government business and therefore have precedence under standing order No. 27 if the Attorney General's submission is correct. It follows that following the orders of the day, we would have to proceed to motions, adjournment of debate on motions dealing first with government business and then revert back to bills after that order has been completed.

MR. SPEAKER: Well, there's two things that the Chair has to consider — one, standing order No. 27 which states quite clearly in sub-section 2 that on days when government business has precedence that it may be called in any order that the government sees fit.

The Honourable Members will note also standing order No. 33, that a motion for reading or proceeding to the orders of the day shall have precedence over any other motion before the House. No amendments of that debate, no amendments to or debate on this motion shall be allowed. I think it's quite clear that the government may proceed to any part of the order paper they wish, really, so long as it takes into account the precedence motion which was established just prior to the budget debate giving priority to the committee of supply. 1, therefore, rule that the House is quite properly in public bills and orders.

Adjourned debate on the second reading of Bill No. 3. The Honourable Member for Vancouver East.

AN ACT TO AMEND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS ACT

(continued)

MR. A.B. MACDONALD (Vancouver East): Mr. Speaker, on Bill No. 3 I do not want to in any way refer to the ad which appeared last Friday in the Vancouver Sun and other papers, in terms of whether or not there has been a breach of the privileges of the Legislature. I just want to say that apart from the technical aspects of breach that if our deliberations and the second reading of the bill had been before a court — whether it was a provincial court or the Supreme Court of British Columbia, any court — and one of the parties had seen fit to take out an advertisement in a newspaper reflecting in any way upon the matter before the court, that would have been contempt of court and punishable by fine or imprisonment.

The reason for that, of course, is to allow those

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deliberations to proceed untrammeled and free of unfair and undue influence. Yet, we find here as we proceed with second reading of a very important bill that political propaganda has been paid for by the taxpayers' own dollars through the instrumentality of this government. I say that to use the taxpayers' own dollars to brainwash the taxpayer is reprehensible and I say to use the taxpayers' own dollars to attempt to subvert or undermine or influence the deliberations of this legislative body is reprehensible. I say what we see here is use of taxpayers' own money to subvert political democracy. I therefore move the adjournment of this debate until the next sitting of the House.

Motion negatived on the following division:

YEAS — 18

NAYS — 32

MR. SPEAKER: The Honourable the Attorney General.

HON. MR. PETERSON: Mr. Speaker, I want to reply very briefly to the very short speech made on this bill by the first Member for Vancouver East (Mr. Macdonald). I think we're perhaps grateful that it was short. But he dealt with just one point in his remarks and that's all I intend to deal with and it's by way of reply to the Honourable Members. Because it's a bit ironical to hear the loud complaints today, Mr. Speaker, about statements emanating from another side of the House relating to this bill, Bill No. 3, when a short time ago the parties across the way, the Opposition, were represented at a rally at the Forum dealing specifically with Bill No. 3. What hypocrisy, Mr. Speaker. Here it is. I have the report in the Vancouver Sun, Friday March 10, 1972. "Teachers Urged To Consider Strikes."

Interjection by Hon. Members.

HON. MR. PETERSON: Now, you don't want to listen. You don't want to listen, do you?

The Leader of the Opposition has a lot to say when he's on his seat but very little when he's on his feet. "To wild cheers from about 3,500 irate public employees in the P.N.E. Garden Auditorium, several people made statements. Ray Haynes, Homer Stephens, and David Barrett, the Leader of the Opposition." Let me quote from what he said.

Here he comes in such a pious way to complain about some editorial written on education in Ontario published in British Columbia. What did the N.D.P. Leader say? He said: "Are you prepared to get off your scuttlebutts and go out and beat this government? This is not a fight for selfish interest. It's a fight for the principle of the dignity of the individual in a free society." That's what he said.

Talk about debating a bill, talk about debating the bill other than in this Legislature. If anyone has been guilty of that, it's the Leader of the N.D.P., Mr. Speaker.

And the Liberals, not to be outdone, were represented by the Member for North Vancouver–Seymour. He shouted and I'm quoting, shouted: "Let's kick this lot out of office." That's what he said.

Interjections by Hon. Members.

HON. MR. PETERSON: And then Mr. Speaker, at this same event, printed postcards addressed to Premier Bennett asking for withdrawal of Bill No. 3 were distributed. The crowd voted against this bill as anti-educational and antidemocratic. What hypocrisy for these Members to come to this Legislature today and make the complaint that the Honourable first Member for Vancouver East (Mr. Macdonald) registered on the floor of this House, Mr. Speaker, because the night of this meeting there was a night sitting here.

Where were you? Why weren't you here? Why wasn't the Leader of the Opposition here paying attention to government business, public business?

HON. MR. BENNETT: He's paid by public money. He's paid by public money.

HON. MR. PETERSON: He is paid by public money. The Member for North Vancouver–Seymour is paid by public money.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. MACDONALD: Point of order. The Attorney General is obviously far from the principle of the bill. (Laughter). Admittedly I raised the point as to whether taxpayers' dollars should be used for political propaganda. Now maybe I was out of order at that point. But he's away out of order, away off the bill.

If I was out of order, that doesn't give the Attorney General the right to be speaking out of order.

MR. SPEAKER: Get to. the point of order, please. Order, please! I would agree with the Honourable the first Member for Vancouver East (Mr. Macdonald) that this discussion on both sides is out of order on this bill.

However, the Chair did allow the first Member for Vancouver East to proceed while he was out of order just a little bit, but he was nevertheless out of order. I agree that the Honourable the Attorney General himself had a right to reply but his discussion on the matter is out of order. The Honourable the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. BARRETT: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I intend to speak on this bill, I intend to speak on this bill as I have spoken on this bill in public. When I spoke on this bill in public, Mr. Speaker, I spent my own money to fly over to that meeting, to be there.

[ Page 863 ]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to speak on this bill and ask that the government provide the Opposition the same amount of money they paid for this ad for us to place an ad, Mr. Speaker, if we're going to have national debate on this bill.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, order! One moment, one moment. The Honourable the Leader of the Opposition, just wait one second please. The Honourable first Member for Vancouver East (Mr. Macdonald) has risen to a point of order which I've accepted.

The point of order was the Honourable the Attorney General was out of order in discussing the whole matter of advertising and matters other than the principles of this particular bill. I have agreed with his point of order. I now ask you to proceed with the principle of Bill No. 3.

MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, I was under attack.

MR. SPEAKER: Nevertheless, the Honourable the Member is not in order to review the matter.

MR. BARRETT: Alright, Mr. Speaker, then let's stick to the debate. The debate has been taken to the public arena. In taking that debate to the public arena they're quoting, the government is quoting an editorial.

MR. SPEAKER: What we're concerned with here, what the House must be concerned with, is the principles that are contained in Bill No. 3, not what extracurricular action may have been taken on the subject.

MR. BARRETT: Alright, Mr. Speaker, this relates to the principle of the bill, the content of this ad does — no question about it. Now, Mr. Speaker….

MR. SPEAKER: The Honourable Leader of the Opposition himself has placed the matter before the Chair for consideration, as a matter of privilege.

MR. BARRETT: That's right.

MR. SPEAKER: Surely that debate, to be continuing on this subject, would be anticipating a debate that may take place on this matter of privilege.

MR. BARRETT: Well, Mr. Speaker, because of the government's refusal to instruct the House with the advice of your ruling, how is it possible that we can presume what the ruling may or may not be? We must press on with the debate. As part of the debate, government has given in evidence a certain statement to the newspapers.

That has been part of the debate. Since there is no decision from the Chair and the debate is being pushed in an arrogant manner by the government then we must refer to the part of the debate that has been taken outside of this House by the government itself with public funds.

MR. SPEAKER: I'm sorry to interrupt again, the Honourable the Leader of the Opposition. Just a few moments ago, the subject matter which he is currently attempting to discuss, was declared out of order by the Chair when asked for it to be ruled out of order by the Honourable the first Member for Vancouver East (Mr. Macdonald).

MR. BARRETT: No, Mr. Speaker, I'm referring to it. I agree completely about the nature of the actions of myself or the government. But now I'm referring to the substance of the Act.

MR. SPEAKER: Very well.

MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, a vehicle has been chosen to, in my opinion, inflame the public mind about the nature of this debate. The vehicle that has been chosen is to use an editorial….

MR. SPEAKER: I'm sorry. The Honourable Member is again out of order and is not discussing the principle of the bill in question.

MR. BARRETT: I'm going to read the editorial, Mr. Speaker, which relates specifically to the argument of financing and I think that you must understand that it deals with the principle of an experience with a similar legislation or similar methods in another jurisdiction on …

MR. SPEAKER: The House during the debate on the principle of this particular bill is talking about the principle of the bill itself…

MR. BARRETT: Right.

MR. SPEAKER: …And nothing contained in an advertisement which the Speaker, as a matter of fact, has not read. I am sure that the Honourable Member is aware of the rule, but he must get back to the principle of this particular bill otherwise the Chair will have no alternative but to conclude his address which I believe would be unfortunate because I know that he has many points to raise on this matter of the principle of this bill.

MR. BARRETT: Well, Mr. Speaker, I have to call to your attention the contents of the editorial because they are on educational matters relating to financing, relating to negotiating with teachers, and relating to bargaining.

MR. SPEAKER: If the Honourable Member will confine his remarks to that area.

MR. BARRETT: Yes, fine. I was going to read the headline. It says: "If They Go Out, Let Them Stay Out." I consider that's….

Interjection by an Hon. Member.

MR. BARRETT: Well, it's endorsed by the Government of the Province of British Columbia. It's paid for by the taxpayers of British Columbia. Now it relates to an emotional reaction, Mr. Speaker….

Interjection by an Hon. Member.

MR. SPEAKER: The Honourable the Member for Cowichan-Malahat.

MR. STRACHAN: Yes, I'd like to point out that in moving the bill for second reading, the Minister of Education (Hon. Mr. Brothers) referred to matters completely outside of British Columbia. He referred to the Economic Council of

[ Page 864 ]

Canada and his figures have embraced the whole education scene, the whole social welfare scene in Canada, the whole health scene in Canada. He also referred to the State of Washington with reference to education referenda and teachers and so on, and he related to this bill. The Minister himself led us in a debate which took in all of Canada and went beyond the borders of Canada and included the State of Washington. So I suggest that in reading this editorial — referring to it — this Member is in order.

MR. SPEAKER: I appreciate the Member's viewpoint. What I am trying to say is that at that time there was no motion for consideration before the Chair and that the matter of dealing with an editorial, the contents of which the Speaker has not seen, may or may not be in accordance with the principle of this particular bill.

I think it would not be improper to review the Department of Education insofar as it affected the matters in this bill in other jurisdictions.

MR. BARRETT: The contents of this particular editorial reflect on reactions to government policy — attempting to cut the cost of education and to deal with the bargaining rights of teachers The content of this editorial deals with that. That is of course why I raised the matter under a point of privilege which is still under your review. But the contents itself do relate directly to the debate.

For example, the title is: "If They Go, Let Them Stay Out." That relates to collective bargaining, Mr. Speaker, which brings me into the main body of my address. I will leave the editorial for a matter of record.

Mr. Speaker, I think that the bill facing us is essentially a political bill. It is a bill, in my opinion, using the arguments of collective bargaining that affect the quality of education deeply for the children of this province.

Mr. Speaker, the government views education from a uni-dimensional point of view. This government has shown the attitude that education is a singular, unrelated specific in its total budget. It has a habit of taking one-dimensional views of problems. Perhaps that may be part of the secret of its political success, but there are two areas in government responsibility, in my opinion, that must never be looked upon uni-dimensionally and one of those is welfare and the other is education.

This bill, by its presence on the order paper has already had devastating psychological effects. This bill has affected the confidence of most of the people in this province in this government's approach to education, the school board's approach to education, the teacher's approach to education and the children's approach to education.

This government has taken the position that money is what counts in education and that everything related to education is below the money aspect in terms of priority. We have had tragic reflections, perhaps words better not said in this House, but we have indeed had tragic reflections on the nature of scope in the education field. We had the Minister of Municipal Affairs (Hon. Mr. Campbell) refer to art and music and other "baloney." I regret that.

I heard the Minister make those remarks — if he wishes to withdraw them for the record, perhaps he will have the opportunity to do that when he rises in his place in this debate.

Along with that, we have had witness to the government itself, through a spokesman during this debate, appear on a radio programme. In response to some questions the Honourable the Minister appeared on a radio programme and said on that radio programme: "Teachers in Fort Nelson and the northern part of the province have realised that if their salaries continue to climb at the rates they are, there would be little left over for the school board. So this year they voluntarily set their salaries at the provincial guidelines that I suggested, which were 6.5 per cent."

The teachers in Fort Nelson categorically deny that. Categorically deny it. I have here a copy of a letter received by the Honourable the Minister (Hon. Mr. Brothers) — I want to bring it to the attention of the House — from the teachers in Fort Nelson. They say that the Minister's statement is and I quote: "A blatant distortion of the facts."

The Minister was quoted as speaking for the teachers. He was quoted as saying:

"Teachers in Fort Nelson and the northern part of the province, they realise that if their salaries continue to climb at the rates they are, there would be very little left over for the school board to improve the educational system. So this year they voluntarily set their salaries at the provincial guideline that I suggested, which was 6.5 per cent. They provided the additional money which would normally have gone in their salaries to the school board to improve the educational system and it involves $30,000."

This is a blatant distortion of the facts. They're in effect telling the Minister that he is not telling the truth. Now that's a matter between the Minister and themselves, but that is the position taken by the Fort Nelson Teachers' Association.

They are stating that the Minister is not being truthful. That is their position, but I refer to you now and I read to this House and I'm prepared to table it, a copy of a letter sent by the teachers to the Minister.

The above statement made by the Minister is a blatant distortion of the facts. Firstly, we negotiated an increase of 8.9 per cent on payroll costs. At no time did we negotiate on the basis of 6.5 per cent.

Secondly, we did not give the board any money to improve the educational system. What we did was to defer our increases until September, 1972, so that the board would not be forced to dismiss five teachers — a situation which would surely have resulted in the deterioration of the learning conditions in Fort Nelson. The deferred money was to be used to pay the salaries of these five teachers.

We resent your attempt to support Bill No. 3 with our unique local problem of last November. We did not support your 6.5 per cent guideline. Furthermore, we resent the inference that the Fort Nelson Teachers' Association supports your stand on Bill No. 3, contrary to the stand taken by the rest of the teachers in British Columbia. We do not support Bill No. 3.

Signed. H. Reddecop, president, Fort Nelson Teachers' Association.

If you like, Mr. Speaker, I'll lay this letter on the table.

MR. SPEAKER: The Honourable Member will require leave.

MR. BARRETT: Whatever the House prefers. O.K., Mr. Speaker, I'd ask the House to give leave to file this letter.

Leave granted.

MR. BARRETT: Now, Mr. Speaker, that is a second

[ Page 865 ]

example of what I'm referring to in the psychological warfare, the psychological damage that has been caused by the government and its Members in intemperate statements.

Collective bargaining is an issue. Certainly it is. But far more important is the question of the dignity, the self-respect and the self-image of the teachers in our classrooms in this province. Because, Mr. Speaker, if the government through this bill, as has been evidenced by the Minister's use or misuse of information from the Fort Nelson's teachers' action, the government has destroyed the psychological confidence that is absolutely necessary between teacher and government and teacher and classroom.

This government has taken a position that has forced teachers to re-examine their whole professional relationship with their employers. Once that takes place, Mr. Speaker, I don't care how prudent, how cautious, or how professional any teacher can be, it cannot help but affect him psychologically in terms of his delivery of service in that classroom.

When the government makes statements, such as the Minister of Municipal Affairs did, and statements such as the Minister of Education make, they are doing untold damage to the educational system in this province. The children who go to those schools, who have been told by this government that the most important thing in their life is their education, the whole reason why many, many people, take their families up north or men leave their families for months on end to go to construction camps or mining camps, is to earn money to maintain the stable family base in the community where they're from and to insure that their family nurtures their children through a good educational experience.

How many programmes, Mr. Speaker, are developed on the basis of "what I'm really working for, is not so much myself, but my children"? How many men go into the bush and spend four or six months in the bush at a time, or up in a mining camp and spend four or six months at a time, or a construction camp — half the year away from their family, on the basis that what they are doing is a good foundation for their children?

Who is it that contributes to the riches of this province? If it were not for those people leaving their families — if it were not for those people labouring in the primitive conditions that still exist in the primary resource-extraction services and industries in this province, we wouldn't have an educational system.

These people are the ones who pay the taxes. These people are the ones who produce the wealth of this great province. What do they expect for the expenditure of their wealth? They expect the best for their children. Already this government has destroyed the psychological possibilities of that desk being available for their children.

The Member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Capozzi) said all the teachers were worried about were their salaries. Another psychological blow! What an absurd statement to make!

III read you a telegram sent to the Honourable Member for Mackenzie (Hon. Mrs. Dawson) and the Honourable the Minister of Education:

THE POWELL RIVER TEACHERS' ASSOCIATION
PROTESTS MOST STRONGLY THE PROPOSED
AMENDMENTS TO THE SCHOOL ACT WHICH
WOULD EMPOWER THE MINISTER OF EDUCATION
TO ESTABLISH ARBITRARILY A CEILING ON
TEACHERS' SALARIES. SUCH A MOVE WOULD
NEGATE THE RIGHT OF TEACHERS TO NEGOTIATE
WITH THEIR EMPLOYERS ON SALARY MATTERS.
FURTHER, IT WOULD CAUSE CONFRONTATION
BETWEEN TEACHERS AND PARENTS. WE CANNOT TOLERATE
A CHANGE IN LEGISLATION WHICH
DENIES A BASIC DEMOCRATIC RIGHT AND WHICH
JEOPARDIZES THE ESSENTIAL EDUCATION RELATIONSHIP
BETWEEN TEACHERS AND PARENTS.

In my opinion, Mr. Speaker, this government has deliberately gone out to divide teachers from parents and students from teachers. I want to refer to one of the recipients of that telegram, the Honourable the Minister without Portfolio (Hon. Mrs. Dawson). I read from the Victoria Times dated March 7, 1972:

The Powell River and District Teachers' Federation have made a swipe at Minister without Portfolio Isabel Dawson. In a news release Monday, the teachers say Mrs. Dawson has so little confidence in the government's legislation that she apparently can't face questions at a meeting with Powell River teachers.

Now, Mr. Speaker, she is part of the government that has placed ads about this matter in the paper. She can't go to a meeting and face teachers. The release says that: "Teachers regret that the Mackenzie M.L.A. has refused to appear at a meeting of all the teachers in District 47."

That in itself indicates the whole point of this government's action on Bill 33 has been to psychologically damage that relationship between parents and teachers and students and trustees.

Now, I want to further bolster the point by reading from a Press release from the British Columbia School Trustees' Association, not known to be associated with any political group — elected members in the same fashion that M.L.A.s are elected, except that they have a non-partisan label. Even before they're elected as school trustees they have agreed that they wish to cooperate at the trustee level beyond a party philosophy or a party commitment. January 29, 1972, from the School Trustees' Association:

"Apart from the utter confusion which this will cause at the local level, our main concern is that the government on the one hand is giving school boards a whole new set of responsibilities and at the same time is drastically reducing their authority," said Jack Smedley, president of the B.C. School Trustees' Association in Vancouver, Saturday.

Mr. Speaker, the government has set out to deliberately inflame groups, in my opinion, around this legislation. It did not call for consultation on the bill. It did not say to the school trustees, who are indeed elected officials, "we are introducing this legislation. You are the people who must function with this bill in the field, we ask you to come to committee in this House."

Was the Minister willing when he knew last October to announce that he was going to bring it in? Did he between October and the time the legislation was introduced sit down and show a draft bill to the school trustees so that they could have a reaction to it? No way. He made an arrogant announcement, walked off the stage, and said: "This is what I'm going to do, " in the front of hundreds of people who must stand for election, just the way he does.

Instead of consulting these people, some of whom are members of his own party, instead of saying "we are a democratic government, we have a new concept of financing, " he ignored them completely and pulled ahead with this legislation and made the inane statements that he has had attributed to him to further inflame the situation, by misinterpreting — the kindest word that I can use — such statement as the Fort Nelson teachers' statement.

[ Page 866 ]

Mr. Speaker, I find that the government's behaviour through the Minister has been one of provocation right from the beginning. Especially when we talk about how much money is involved.

Because in the final analysis, Mr. Speaker, what kind of direct taxation are we talking about? We're talking about direct per-capita taxation that does not amount to more than a cent per day per person in British Columbia. And the government is willing to put the question of education on the altar in a sacrificial manner around finances when we are in effect dealing with a little more than a cent a day per person, in British Columbia. I don't think you can justify it, Mr. Minister….

MR. SPEAKER: The Honourable Member will please address the Chair.

MR. BARRETT: Through you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Not through me, but refer to the Minister in the third person.

MR. BARRETT: The Minister, Mr. Speaker, cannot justify in my opinion this move. There's no sound financial reason for it when you consider the direct taxation that it involves. The Minister is asking people to vote on matters that affect all of the children in the community.

Mr. Speaker, all of the parents can't vote. In a democratic society on a matter as important as this, about the education of one's child all the parents cannot vote on that matter. It is a dilution of the democratic process that a mother and a father who may be deeply concerned about the quality of education affecting their child must stand by and hope and pray that somebody else makes a decision, in the manner or the direction that they want. Not all parents are being permitted to vote.

Many people who are voting on this issue may not even have children in school. And yet because of that Minister's position and this government's legislation a smaller percentage of the community who have children in schools will not even have a direct voice of stating the quality of that education.

I don't like that Mr. Speaker, I don't like it at all. And it must be a matter of deep resentment for many people out there. That for a cent a day, in terms of direct taxation the ratepayers will have the say, and many, many parents will not be consulted whatsoever.

Mr. Speaker, what about the cut-back in teaching staff? We had a number of unemployed teachers who came to our office outlining their plights. I think there were 12 in our office, Mr. Speaker, two of whom had Masters' degrees, one in English, a Master's degree in English. You know, Mr. Speaker, how much money it cost the taxpayer to graduate a Master's in English? You know Mr. Speaker, that that girl is now applying for welfare with a Master's degree in English. We've asked the taxpayers to supplement her income — money the working people of this province have sacrificed to provide taxation so that their children can have a high quality in education.

We have graduated people from our universities with post-graduate degrees that cost us a great deal of money, and with the present government's policies, these people are asking for welfare. It is self defeating, Mr. Speaker.

We have been told for one whole generation that the only possible chance for survival in a highly competitive world, in a highly competitive market place, is to increase our production and to increase our educational skills. When every other country in the world is faced with those pressures, this government is now making a direct assault on quality of education.

What will the government tell the teachers who are in training now? Why are we spending all that money that it costs the taxpayer to train teachers, if there are no jobs for them? How can the Minister justify the vast expenditure at one end of the whole educational machinery, of training teachers to be absorbed in the educational system, if on one hand he's feeding teachers into the educational machine, and at the other end cutting off funds to hire them? What's the point? Mr. Speaker, I ask what is the point?

What about classroom and pupil/teacher ratio in a classroom? Mr. Speaker, it'll all be up next year. And the effects of this bill will be dramatic at that time. Time and time again when the Minister of Education has spoken in this House, he has talked about a commitment to quality. He boasts about the educational system in British Columbia, Mr. Speaker. The government cannot boast at the present legislation that we are faced with.

I want to talk about a particular problem that was perhaps touched upon by the Member for Cowichan-Malahat (Mr. Strachan). The matter is a particular problem of rural areas. Because of the nature of their school boards, and it's a matter of fact, they have been generally much more conservative in developing new programmes or auxiliary services for their particular school areas. I had the privilege and the responsibility, when I was first elected, to represent all the way from Coquitlam up to Agassiz. And I tell you, Mr. Speaker, the educational experience is varied, between the school boards involved in that short 70-mile stretch.

Interjection by an Hon. Member.

MR. BARRETT: Certainly it was 12 years ago. The last time I represented the area out to Agassiz was in 1966. The Minister himself, Mr. Speaker, acknowledged in this House that there was a great deal of catching up to be done by one of the school districts in my constituency. Everybody agreed to that.

Mr. Speaker, it was more than construction, it was the quality of education itself. Because when the Minister came into this House with one of his arguments, he said that putting ceilings on would enable the smaller community to catch up. And that was nonsense.

He put ceilings on equally, to all. And now with these ceilings on, Mr. Speaker, it means that those school districts who are already behind — unlike the classroom leaders, such as the West Vancouver district, or my own district Coquitlam — those areas that are behind will now not have the opportunity whatsoever to catch up.

How does the government justify that, Mr. Speaker, in relation to the information that it has in terms of quality in education varying throughout this, province? Those areas can't catch up under this new formula. There's no way they'll be able to catch up. It means children in those areas whose standard of education is below norm — because there has to be a below the norm, Mr. Speaker, otherwise there could be no norm — the same standard that you used to justify the actions in Campbell River, was to publish some form of norm. How will this bill allow all those school districts that are below that norm to catch up so that those pupils involved will have an equal chance and equal opportunity in this province? The Minister has brought in a ceiling universally. In effect he is saying with his own degree of measurement that he's committing all those below the norm to stay below the norm. That's not sense, Mr. Speaker. Foolish!

What do we do when we open the pages of any

[ Page 867 ]

newspaper, especially on a weekend and we can go through columns and columns and columns, of help wanted ads? I remember the Minister of Rehabilitation and Social Development (Hon. Mr. Gaglardi) said there are 10,000 jobs open in B.C. Why can't they be filled? Many of them can't be filled Mr. Speaker, because we don't have the qualified people to fill them. There are jobs going begging in this province and the reason they are going begging is that we don't have the skilled people to fill those jobs.

HON. MR. BROTHERS: They want experienced people.

MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, the Minister sends a devastating shaft across the floor. "They want experienced people." Mr. Speaker, how will they even get jobs unless they've got the basic educational qualification, let alone get the experience? It's obvious with that kind of comment Mr. Speaker, that the Minister has not thought out the implication of what he is doing.

I ask this government to produce research, details, exactly the quality of education in this province — the good aspects, and the bad aspects — that lead them into this step to give a blanket limitation of financing. I ask them to do that.

It's not good enough, Mr. Speaker, that a teacher turned back $1,000. I ask you how much money was spent on research to provide the facts to support this bill. I'll submit to you, Mr. Speaker, the answer is none. Absolutely none.

Do you justify a medical operation in a hospital without a confident diagnosis? No one would treat a broken leg without an X-ray. What X-ray have you given to this finance formula? What research have you done? Mr. Speaker, it is a continuation of dumb luck, or blind stupidity, in terms of developing educational policy in this province.

I sat in this House when we went through the Chant report. And what was the Chant report? Was it a research document substantiated by time-proven methods of gathering facts? Not at all. The Chant report, Mr. Speaker, was a collection of opinions, digested into a book, and put forward as a blueprint for education with no research to back up any of his points. And that's a fact.

I remember in the debate of the Chant report, I pointed out some booklets on programmed instruction. The former Minister of Education sitting in his place asked about the material on programmed instruction and I sent the booklet over.

You know what I discovered, Mr. Speaker? That booklet was on the mailing list for educational research done by the Ford Foundation. That particular project cost $3 million. The result of that project was available for 50 cents, but the government was not even on the mailing list of the Ford Foundation's educational research programme. They don't even know what's going on.

Will the Minister when he's closing the debate stand up and tell us what's going on in educational research and M.I.T. and Harvard this very day? Will the Minister tell us exactly what his reaction is to the basic research that's going on in educational costs in the United States, and what particular research here in Canada is referred to that substantiates this approach in this legislation?

I challenge the Minister, to deliver to this House any research made by qualified educators, economists, or anyone he cares to name that he's used as a base for justifying this particular move.

Mr. Speaker, surely a government that tried to stop from spending over $1.5 billion a year, the greater part of it in education as the Minister tells us, would not make basic educational policy changes without substantive research.

I challenge the Minister to give us the names of the authors, the researchers and their works that lead to the development of this bill. Who are you dealing with Mr. Speaker? You are dealing with educators themselves who must substantiate the materials they bring into the classroom. No teacher would bring into the classroom material that was based entirely on his or her opinion. We require by law that the quality of education for teachers enables them to use well-documented, well-researched material that they bring into the classroom.

Now they are having stuffed down their curricula, the trustees and the school boards, an Act that has no basic research to back it up, no basic information or material gathered by this government to justify its actions, and no blueprints to tell the people of this province where we are going in education. Ail it deals with, Mr. Speaker, is money, money, money — a one dimensional point of view.

Mr. Speaker, I don't know how the government can be so callous about a piece of legislation. We've seen the Minister of Mines bring in pollution control bills, and not even be aware of research that's done or material that's available to control pollution.

But surely we have a right to expect, the parents have a right to expect, the taxpayers have a right to expect, the people of this province have a right to expect that a bill as far-reaching as this one can be documented in its decisions by research from all corners of this province and in North America.

Yet, Mr. Speaker, if we ask the Minister of Education to bring in a bibliography he'd bring in one name, the Minister of Finance's name. What do we tell our children now, Mr. Speaker? And that's the challenge to the government. What do we tell our children? "Stay in school. Get a better education. Compete in the world out there." What do we tell them? "Stay in school, take your chances and hope that you're one of the lucky ones." Mr. Minister, you must tell us that you intend, perhaps, to close down the School of Education at Simon Fraser and at U.B.C. to stop producing teachers.

How can you justify the expenditure of training teachers if they can't be absorbed in the educational system? If you're concerned about money, tell us how you can justify that. Can you tell us what you'll do to absorb those teachers who we've already trained and spent a great deal of money on their training? Mr. Minister, I said at the outset that I think this bill is a political bill. Unless you can bring in a great deal more information to back it up, other than opinion, then you'll prove that it's a political bill.

No one is more confused out there than the general public who have been forced to make educational decisions purely on the basis of money with no substantive research by this government published in booklets, on radio programmes or on television stating exactly why they're taking this direction.

The only publication we've seen, Mr. Speaker, is an ad from an Ontario newspaper, an emotionally-charged ad that has no connection whatsoever with the particular situation in this province.

This is a divisive bill, Mr. Speaker. It's cheap politics and I condemn it. Everything that I have had in terms of my own educational experience in this province has lead me to condemn this bill, because I've been educated by public funds in this province and at no time in my educational

[ Page 868 ]

experience was I ever told to jump to a conclusion on an opinion.

The most valuable thing that can be achieved through education is the ability to think, to use reason, and develop one's intelligence. That can only be done when there are valid arguments logically presented based on factual research. All of those factors are absent in this bill. The only thing that's present is politics.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Honourable the Minister of Municipal Affairs.

HON. MR. CAMPBELL: Mr. Speaker, I think the most telling point made by the Leader of the Opposition, and I think it should tell us all something — certainly it should tell the people who are thinking through the issues involved with this bill — is the real questions that are in the minds of the people in the Province of British Columbia. The Leader said, and I agree with him, that the increased costs happen to be I cent per day when you're talking about moving beyond the 108 per cent figure as it applies to most school districts.

The other very telling point is that that happens to be wrapped up in approximately 8 per cent of the costs of education being borne by the residential property owners. Therefore, when the people who have been voting on these referendums are voting no, the Leader is quite right when he suggests that there's relatively small amounts of money involved in terms of that particular plebiscite. But if that's the case, then that is the most compelling reason why people wish to look at education.

What are they, in fact, looking at? It's quite clear to me that what they're looking at is the whole question of accountability. They're evaluating the system, they're examining some of the situations which they are familiar with in their own area and they're asking questions not only in terms of the finances but in a professional way.

Otherwise, if I had an arrangement like that and a product to sell like that and I was talking about selling a situation at I cent per day, I'd have no difficulty in selling any referendum in the Province of British Columbia.

So what really is happening? What, Mr. Speaker, is really happening is that the public in this province are asking two questions. One, is there an end to the general spiraling costs in terms of the gross that's involved? And secondly, are we really getting value for the dollars we're spending in education? Those are the real fundamental questions.

It isn't a matter of playing politics, although some of my friends in the B.C. Teachers' Federation, if anybody can be accused of playing politics it's certainly not the Members on this side of the House, but certainly members at the executive level of the B.C. Teachers' Federation are guilty of that very thing.

Interjection by an Hon. Member.

HON. MR. CAMPBELL: When we're talking about this 108 per cent, I think professional people have a responsibility to talk professionally in public about education. Certainly they have every right to make clear that the public are not being asked to put a cap on at 108 per cent over last year's figure. But in reality, Mr. Speaker, what we're talking about this year is somewhere between 16 and 17 per cent increase in every school district that's involved.

The suggestion has been left, and I think quite irresponsibly, that the Department of Education over last year did not do anything at all about the basic programmes. I have heard theoretically responsible people in the B.C. Teachers' Federation, for example, suggesting that there has, in fact, been no lift whatsoever in the basic programme over last year.

Now why would responsible people put that kind of material out? It's not factual. It's not true. Yet it is going out by way of advertisements, it's going out by way of public statements. For what reason? To confuse the people? To try and establish the proposition that we're talking about 108 per cent of last year's programme?

Is that the reason, Mr. Speaker? Because it certainly is not professionally correct. It's intellectually dishonest. Therefore, it must be confusing to the guy on the street. Really, what the guy on the street is being asked to do is to evaluate the programme in his own district and to say whether or not he is willing to spend more than the 108 per cent.

Now, let's take a specific district. I happen to know why some of the questions are being asked in some of the districts in British Columbia. Let's take Campbell River. One of the very specific questions being asked in Campbell River — I think it's a legitimate one — is that 20 people on the staff in Campbell River happen to have no teaching responsibility at all. I'm not talking about principals and vice — principals. I'm talking about 20 supervisory and CO-ordinating personnel who are outside of the classroom completely and do no teaching whatsoever.

Now the Leader was talking about a purported statement I happen to not have made in the first place about co-coordinating and supervisory personnel, that sometimes you have difficulty in finding out exactly what it is they happen to do. But isn't it legitimate, Mr. Speaker, that if the people in Campbell River are going to go beyond the 108 per cent — and one of the issues placed before them is that this lack of ability to go beyond 108 per cent will have something to do with teacher/pupil ratio — don't you think they are entitled to know why those 20 people who are in the supervisory positions cannot, in fact, be put back into the classroom to reduce the teacher/pupil ratio? If that, in fact, is the big deal,

The Member for Burnaby North (Mrs. Dailly) knows very well that that's not a big deal. The Member for Burnaby North along with others in the teaching world have been bouncing around British Columbia peddling the people of the Province of British Columbia that the teacher/pupil ratio is something to do with a very fundamentally sound educational situation. Mr. Speaker, there is a great deal of evidence to the complete contrary. They know that.

You know that if the Leader of the Opposition talks about research, well there's been a great deal of research done in the United States. The Coleman report for one was a very interesting study because it pretty clearly indicated that the teacher/pupil ratio had nothing whatsoever to do with the quality of education that could be expected.

But, Mr. Speaker, at one and the same time that the B.C. Teachers' Federation were talking about. teacher/pupil ratio, we've gone the whole range through into open area teaching — we've got open area commitments involved with team teaching. We've got the whole range of new educational experiences and the Member for Burnaby North knows full well that that has absolutely nothing to do with teacher ratio.

Mr. Speaker, if you really wanted to bring down the teacher ratio in Campbell River, the simplest way to do it would be just simply to divide the 20 people into the number of pupils and you bring down the pupil/teacher ratio by arithmetic. You mean to tell me that that's going to improve

[ Page 869 ]

the educational experience of the pupil in the Campbell River schools? I doubt it.

I can tell you this, Mr. Speaker. I seriously question the job specifications and the reasons for having 20 people outside of the classrooms in that particular school district. I'll tell you why. It creates a hierarchical system of education within that single school district to the point that the classroom teacher in fact cannot really work well with parents, cannot work directly with the process of the school board itself, because in between there's a whole maze of these bureaucratic elements within the school system.

It's time, Mr. Speaker, that these questions that are being legitimately asked by the ratepayers are answered not by the bureaucrats within the system but by the elected school boards. The questions, I can tell you, are not being answered.

John Doe and Mary Smith on the street have a legitimate right to ask for that kind of accountability and that kind of evaluation. Obviously, if the Leader of the Opposition is correct, then it seems unreasonable that John Doe and Mary Smith would, one right after the other, turn down bylaws for which he says we're talking about I cent.

Obviously Mary Smith and John Doe are not happy. If they're not happy, Mr. Speaker, then do we not live within a democratic framework? When we're talking about moving beyond 108 per cent, is it helpful for teachers as they've done in my area to say, and I quote: "We don't wish the education in our district to be determined by the mob. We do not wish to be subject to the tyranny of the mob."? In other words, Mr. Speaker, we don't wish to have to have the responsibility of taking our programmes out, talking to John Doe and Mary Smith and trying to convince them that our system is sound, that it can stand the light of day, that we are accountable for it. We can say to John Doe and Mary Smith: "We think that if you were to support us beyond the 108 per cent, you would find yourselves in a better education system, not just in terms of dollars but in terms of quality. We really believe we can sell you on what we're doing now. We think we're right. We think it's professionally sound. We're willing to join in a community discussion to show you what is the best for your young people in the schools." Is there anything wrong with that, Mr. Speaker? Is there anything wrong with having to have that sense of responsibility back to the community?

If there is, then, Mr. Speaker, I don't really know what we're talking about in terms of democracy and participation. I can tell you it sits well with no one and it sits well with no person in the public when professional people talk about the tyranny of the mob when they're talking about plebiscites that seek to raise the issue beyond the 108 per cent.

The average guy in the street knows it's not 108 per cent. He knows that in fact it's 16 per cent and his arithmetic is pretty good. He understands. The average guy on the street, Mr. Speaker, knows what the Economic Council for Canada says. They weren't talking about gross dollars. The Economic Council for Canada was talking about the rate of increase. That's a far different situation. The average guy in the street knows that. He's only asking for a fair deal. He wants to know if it's necessary to spend this rate and if it's necessary to go beyond it, on what basis, what's the rationale? Why should it cost him more than the 108 per cent beyond the basic programme? That's all he asking about.

He wants to know. Mr. Speaker, I suggest he's entitled to know. He's certainly not entitled to know in a framework of political activity which I consider to be completely disgraceful. I've indicated pretty clearly that when I see professional teachers talking about stubbed toes and falling hair as a means of intelligently discussing a bill in this legislature, when I get that kind of stuff thrown around this province I am fearful for the whole profession of teaching if that is the way they're going to be led. I'm fearful. I'm fearful for the young people in this province who are led by a philosophy that would even permit that kind of statement to see the light of day.

Mr. Speaker, that's not my idea of a professional way to act. We've had some chit-chat about playing politics. You know, it's very interesting. In my own area, the president of the B.C. Teachers' Federation stood on the public platform just a week ago and said the answer in Comox is to completely endorse the N.D.P. I wonder why, Mr., Speaker.

Interjection by an Hon. Member.

HON. MR. CAMPBELL: Then I find out why. Because the ways and means committee of the N.D.P. In Comox — and we talk about playing politics — put out a request for funds. A blank cheque appeared on the bottom. All the teacher has to do is send the N.D.P. money. And what's the commitment that the N.D.P. Party makes in return, Mr. Speaker?

Interjections by Hon. Members.

HON. MR. CAMPBELL: The N.D.P. Party….

MR. BARRETT: It's an individual voluntary donation.

Interjections by Hon. Members.

HON. MR. CAMPBELL: Mr. Speaker, the N.D.P. Party in Comox says….

Interjections by Hon. Members.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

HON. MR. CAMPBELL: You pay the shot on the bottom of this blank cheque and for the blank cheque on the bottom which you can sign in terms of money it would be an investment he or she "would never forget." You talk about playing politics?

Interjections by Hon. Members.

HON. MR. CAMPBELL: That, Mr. Speaker, is the lowest form of politics because what it means is this, Mr. Speaker, is that a special group…

AN HON. MEMBER: Where did you get your money?

HON. MR. CAMPBELL: …that we want to have special groups running the Province of British Columbia. We want to have special groups running…

Interjection by an Hon. Member.

HON. MR. CAMPBELL: …the people who come to this Legislature. We want the Members of this Legislature to be in the pocket of big business or the trade union movement or the B.C. Teachers' Federation or the medical profession. Mr. Speaker, the Member for Comox (Hon. Mr. Campbell) will

[ Page 870 ]

never be in anybody's pocket that way. I'll tell you that.

AN HON. MEMBER: Let's see you run this province.

HON. MR. CAMPBELL: Now, Mr. Speaker, we had some comments that in some ways that this particular bill would have that effect on the resource areas of this province. Now, Mr. Speaker, I happen to represent the constituency of Comox which certainly is a resource area. But, Mr. Speaker, I will challenge you to go anywhere in Canada and I'll challenge you to find a better capital plant throughout that entire constituency anywhere in Canada. I'll challenge you to place on the Minister's desk something that would compare favourably to the comprehensive secondary school at Port McNeil. I'll challenge you to find an elementary school or a secondary school that would equal in terms of capital plant the school at Gold River.

Mr. Speaker, we talk about whether this took a long time to take place or that the government was holding back in some way on funds available for these communities. Mr. Speaker, that's a completely false statement because in no way was there any hold ups of funds in those communities.

Interjection by an Hon. Member.

HON. MR. CAMPBELL: I want to tell you, Mr. Speaker, that anybody who was teaching in those particular communities, it was pioneering first class. You'd better believe it. It wasn't a school that was built over time. It was all telescoped in a very short period of time. I don't care whether you talk about Rumble Beach and Port Alice or Port McNeil or Port Hardy or Gold River, or any of those communities, Mr. Speaker. This formula and the way in which education is financed in this province produced a plant which is second to none anywhere in Canada, No question about it.

Mr. Speaker, I think it's a little ridiculous to have people stand in this legislature and make statements about education in this province suggesting that the resource communities in British Columbia are being short-changed. That's what the Leader of the Opposition said. Now, that's irresponsible, Mr. Speaker. It's not only irresponsible it simply is not the truth. It's not the truth.

Why are we bouncing around supposedly having an intelligent discussion on education when the leader of one of the leading political parties in British Columbia can make that kind of nonsense statement? Because that's what it is. Complete nonsense.

We talk about playing politics about resource communities. These teachers in resource communities in my area I can tell you are not being short-changed. And neither are the youngsters in the schools being short-changed in my communities. Anywhere. You know it too.

AN HON. MEMBER: You don't know what you're talking about and you know it.

HON. MR. CAMPBELL: Mr. Speaker, we've had a little bit to say as well about psychological warfare, whatever that happens to mean. Presumably it means that the teaching profession in this province is losing touch with the public they serve. Mr. Speaker, I'm inclined to agree that that's the case. I'm inclined to agree and I think that's exactly the lesson which should be learned about this whole process of evaluation because I don't think it is unimportant, Mr.Speaker, that people are asking the same questions in Ontario.

The Opposition has taken exception to questions being raised in Ontario. Mr. Speaker, do you know why they are being raised in Ontario? And in Nova Scotia, and in Saskatchewan and in Manitoba and in the United States? Surely, Mr. Speaker, the Members opposite are not so blind that they do not understand that right across the North American continent, Mr. Speaker, there are valid questions being asked about educational quality.

There should be. Since when, Mr. Speaker, has the education system been a sacred cow? Since when must you accept from the professionals involved in education that it is the end-all and be-all just because some professional or another happens to say that it was?

Where is the old ethic, Mr. Speaker, that the guy on the street has some input to put into education too? Mr. Speaker, it really bothers me when I hear teachers in my community saying: "Look, you just forget about your position in this scheme of educating Johnny and Mary. Forget about your role as a parent. Just leave the whole deal to us. We'll look after John and Mary." Mr. Speaker, that's a dangerous philosophy because it's educationally unsound.

Interjection by an. Hon. Member.

HON. MR. CAMPBELL: Mr. Speaker, when I see teachers talking professionally within the framework that they can do in five hours almost everything that is required to put within the orbit of the young person in the school and that the parents can just sit back and basically do nothing, Mr. Speaker, I say that is a dangerous philosophy. It is a complete distrust of the relationship that should exist between the parents and the school.

Interjection by an Hon. Member.

HON. MR. CAMPBELL: Mr. Speaker, if the teaching profession is really serious about this question of self-respect and dignity within the communities that I know anything about then, Mr. Speaker, they'll dialogue with parents and they won't start yesterday. They will start as they should have been never stopped — they'll do it every single day that they have charge of their particular school.

Mr. Speaker, I want to tell you this, that if the teachers in British Columbia feel that there is some way to obtain dignity and self-respect by looking at the people they seek to serve as a mob or the tyranny of the mob, or they seek to suggest that there's some dignity and some self-respect to be gained by the kind of document that was placed on my desk on Friday, Mr. Speaker, they're going to be sadly mistaken. Sadly mistaken.

Mr. Speaker, the tragedy of the whole thing is they will certainly do very little for the young people they serve in their community and they will do very little for the profession of teaching. I am proud to be a member of that profession. I am not proud of some of the organizational activities of that profession.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Hon. Member for Yale Lillooet.

MR. W.L. HARTLEY (Yale-Lillooet): Mr. Speaker, in rising to speak to Bill No. 3 I'd first like to comment upon the remarks the Minister of Municipal Affairs has made. I

[ Page 871 ]

wonder if the profession is as proud of him as he claims to be of them?

He has made reference to the teachers saying: "We will teach Johnny and Mary — just leave them to us. We don't want to be involved. We don't want to involve you as parents." My wife and I probably have a little different educational problem in that for the past nine years we have brought our three children down to Victoria with us so that they go into the Victoria school system on the first of January and leave normally during Easter. I can tell you this, Mr. Speaker, and Mr. Minister of Municipal Affairs, that we have had the privilege either one or both of us attending three public gatherings of the Beacon Hill School where this school is attempting to involve parents. Attempting to make that school a community school….

AN HON. MEMBER: He's walked out.

MR. HARTLEY: Yes, he might well walk out. Casting aspersions against an honourable and ethical profession.

Teachers by and large are very conscientious teachers. The other evening when the vote on Bill No. 3 first came up I went out to phone one of the teachers that teaches one of our children. It was about 9:30 at night, and I said, "I hope I didn't disturb you." "No," he said, "I was just busy marking papers." So the Minister that just sat down and other Members who like to think that school day starts at 9:00 and knocks off at 3:00 I know from my association with friends in the profession that it's no eight-hour day, and it's no five-day week. It goes on and on Saturday, Sunday whenever that teacher has time to mark papers or prepare lessons. I think this province has every right to be proud of the teachers that we have.

The former Minister of Education, now the Attorney General (Hon. Mr. Peterson) the Minister of Justice in this province really makes me wonder at times, Mr. Speaker. Here he was criticizing the fact that a group of working people saw fit to organize and attend a rally, and discuss legislation that is before this House and to discuss legislation that would affect them with regard to their salaries, with regard to the professional scope — and it would very definitely affect the quality of education. And yet the Minister of Justice in this province couldn't see that this is one of our inalienable rights in a democracy. He would deny that inalienable right to the teachers and to the working people of this province.

Interjections by Hon. Members.

MR. HARTLEY: Mr. Speaker, the teachers or no other working group have access to this assembly. They elect Members and the Minister of Justice, the Minister of Education, all of us have teachers in our ridings and we are the voice of those people. But, Mr. Speaker, I believe it's a very basic tenet of democracy, particularly when there is legislation before this Legislature, if any particular group feels that they are being or going to be harmed or their professional qualifications limited then it is their basic democratic right to organize and to speak out in public.

If the Minister of Justice doesn't understand that, if the Minister of Justice cannot see that, then I say that he is incompetent particularly when he is the former Minister of Education. He should know that better than anyone else in this House.

Mr. Speaker, what this government is trying to do is to put a dollar value, to try and put a book value, on education.

When they are totalling up the assets in the bookkeeping of this province they're trying to put a hard and fast book value on education. They might well try to do this because I believe when we review the record of this government and the Department of Education and realise that today there are five times as many people on welfare as there were at the start of the last decade, this shows that we are failing with the quality of education to get through to the people that need that education the most — the persons that have learning disorders, slow learners, students with difficulty in reading, writing, or spelling. These are the ones that need a little extra care. A little individual care.

I believe that every student has tremendous potential but the purpose of education and our educational system is to help that child, to help that student, develop and grow. Grow into a good citizen that in doing that finds out what he is best suited for.

If we can do that then we will see the numbers of persons that are unemployed, the numbers of persons that are on welfare, go down instead of going up, up, up until today we have five times as many welfare recipients than we had at the start of the last decade.

I do not think you can put a hard and fast book value on the value of an education to the community or to the individual. But I believe we have to have a system of education that is versatile where the teacher is free to give attention to the child that needs it, and see each child move ahead on an individual basis.

I realise this takes a lot of work and a great deal of time and because of that we need very conscientious people and dedicated people in this profession. I believe we have them.

Now, Mr. Speaker, before the present Minister of Education took over, the former Attorney General that is Minister of Education told me that this government was spending $1 million a year advertising throughout the world to get teachers.

Interjection by an Hon. Member.

MR. HARTLEY: This is what you told me.

AN HON. MEMBER: I never did!

MR. HARTLEY: Mr. Speaker, I was discussing the matter of pupil/teacher ratio and the then Minister of Education stated that they were spending $1 million a year advertising throughout the Commonwealth, advertising throughout the world. We have had quite an influx of good teachers from throughout the Commonwealth and no doubt they will contribute something to our programmes of education. Many of these teachers that came here from other lands may well leave because of this type of restrictive legislation that does a great deal to downgrade the quality of education, to downgrade the prestige the professional person as a teacher should be allowed to hold.

Now, a few years ago we passed Bill No. 86. Bill No. 86, of course, was the start of the new formula that allowed school boards to go to 110 per cent. At that time this group over in this corner of the House argued that putting a limit would greatly restrict many benefits that we had in that day in education. And I know from one school that falls into the Yale-Lillooet riding, the Princeton School District, they've had to cut back several different facilities in their schools.

It's a great rural area, but, by the power of Bill No. 86 — they had one of the best music teachers, and they had a

[ Page 872 ]

band, and they had a good programme of music — that is gone. They had a programme of dental care. That community did not have a dentist, so the school board raised a programme of dental care. That is gone. A great rural district where they get a fair bit of cold weather — they had a programme of subsidized hot lunches, the students paid part. That is gone.

Now, those are but three items that I mention in that one school district. But we have seen a great cut-back in other areas, the libraries, the gyms, the kindergartens, and the special classes. Special classes and kindergartens are something that I believe should be considered a basic essential. But we fail to have throughout British Columbia a basic and a full programme for kindergartens for all schools. I believe the sooner we can start our sons and daughters in the learning process, certainly in the field of language, the more successful those students will be in their schooling.

Now, two of the most dangerous sections of the bill, and the amendments to the bill, Mr. Speaker, are clauses 21, and 22, relating to the necessity for a referendum. In some of the school districts in Yale-Lillooet riding — and I'm thinking mainly of Lillooet School District — they have never been called on through a petition from the citizens and asked to have a referendum. The parents, the property owners, realise that no doubt the best investment they can make in the future is good high-quality education for their children, and they have never presented the Lillooet School Board saying: "It you're going to increase our taxes beyond the 10 per cent and now the 8 per cent you must have a referendum."

I believe that school board has very good communications with the citizens of that district. But what are we going to do now with this bill and the amendment, Mr. Speaker, is to say that we have to take some of those much-needed tax dollars — maybe $10,000 or $15,000 — and hold referendums where we've never held them before. And we must hold those referendums even though the taxpayers are quite happy with the money being spent on education in that community.

This isn't going to do a thing to put more dollars to better use in education. It is going to take some of those educational dollars, Mr. Speaker, and to you Mr. Minister, out of the stream of education and put them into the field of advertising and possibly into the field of politics.

What is going to happen? The members of the Lillooet School Board, as in every other school board, are honourable people. They are public-hearted citizens that are prepared to give a fair bit of their time, a good many of their evenings, and even take days off work to attend school board meetings in their own time. Now, surely they feel that they are responsible just as we in this chamber feel we are responsible — that when we are elected to speak on behalf of our districts if a piece of legislation comes up as it did the other day, a 50-letter bill passing or empowering this government to spend half a billion dollars.

AN HON. MEMBER: Order, order!

MR. HARTLEY: We have the power once we're elected to make decisions with regard to the financial standing of this government, and to the economy of this government. And yet the Minister of Education when he calls out "order, " would deny that same right to the school boards of this province. You bet you are doing this. Mr. Speaker, if the Minister of Education votes in support of this bill he is denying the school boards the right to do as we do here. To go ahead and vote for a limited spending. This is basically what he is doing.

Not only is he down-grading the quality of education, but he is taking away from the school boards their pride in the job that they are doing. He is robbing them of their responsibility as a truly publicly-elected officer.

What could very well happen, Mr. Speaker, we've had a bad enough time getting sufficient people to run for school boards and other public offices, this will be even much more difficult. If we pass this bill and leave that amendment in, forcing school boards to go to referendum regardless of whether the citizens in the district present a petition or not, we will find it much, much more difficult to find responsible citizens who will run and hold public office in a position of school trustees.

So I on that point would like to sum up and say that with the matter of these referendums we are making education more expensive, we're taking dollars out of the school budget to play politics.

Now, I think that we should do all that we can to increase the teacher/pupil ratio so that we have more teachers, to give more individual attention. But what is happening to British Columbia is that it is fast getting some of the largest classes in the nation — fewer teachers to a greater number of students — and this cannot help but deteriorate the quality of education in my opinion.

On the matter of tenure, should tenure be set by statute? Should it be set through the Public Schools Act? Or should we leave it as now set by the cabinet with the whim of the cabinet or by the wink of one man? This is the way it is being done now. So surely tenure should be tied in with the legislation, the Public Schools Act, and if we fail to do this, Mr. Speaker, we will be making the teachers nothing short of political pawns — political pawns, that's what you're doing with legislation,

I feel that by and large, as I've said before, teachers are conscientious professionals, and they are very much concerned about the situation of education with your son, your daughter, my son and my daughter. To treat them in this fashion adds nothing to their professional standing, to their pride on their job, and to their ability to improve the quality of education.

Now, why is it that we are singling the teachers out from any other group in our work force? Why are we passing legislation that will do things to them that we wouldn't dare do to other groups in the work force? This is the first group so far that has to submit to referendum, say over their salary. Why is this? Is this simply because we saw we can get away by forcing the teachers to use compulsory arbitration? Is it because we have robbed them of their rights of collective bargaining? And do we say: "This is a weak group, force them to use compulsory arbitration"? We've taken their right of collective bargaining away, and we're going to further trample them. I'm afraid it is, Mr. Speaker. If this is the attitude, if this is in Bill No. 3 and Bill No. 4 with regard to the Department of Rehabilitation and Social Welfare, if we're going to set out virtual little dictators over large groups of professionals and in the case of Bill No. 49, unfortunate people, then Mr. Speaker I submit that this is a dagger in the heart of democracy.

I would like to conclude, Mr. Speaker, by stating to you that the Honourable Members across there that are impatient if they'd like to get up and speak I'm sure their constituents will be asking why they held their silence.

In conclusion, what has happened in education indicates very, very clearly this government's anti-education attitude.

[ Page 873 ]

It's down-graded the status of teachers, it's down-graded the quality of education.

Now that was my conclusion, but being as the Minister of Municipal Affairs (Hon. Mr. Campbell) walked out, I better give you my start. The Minister of Municipal Affairs, Mr. Speaker, accused us of playing politics with education. And yet here's a clipping out of today's Vancouver Sun, Monday, March 20. What does it say?

Municipal Affairs Minister Dan Campbell had set a potential atmosphere the night before at a Socred gathering here. (This is Nanaimo) He described to a Social Credit league group in the Tally-Ho Travel Lodge the "cheap gutter tactics" of teachers in his own constituency. His unrestricted invective was carried over radio station CHUB.

Now, he claims to be a professional and to be proud of that profession. And yet any politician, any teacher that would use that sort of language is just playing politics….

AN HON. MEMBER: You think teachers should go on strike? You favour that?

MR. HARTLEY: Mr. Speaker, I say the Minister of Municipal Affairs is trying to generate as much political animosity as possible — that's what he's doing. There we have today's paper showing who is generating and playing politics, and the reason he attacks us is just as a smoke screen to try and cover up himself.

He also asks about that blank cheque that was circulated to all the teachers in his district. Here he comes now. He asks about the teachers, being asked to contribute to a political party.

Now it has always been my understanding, Mr. Speaker, that in a democracy the more people that you can involve on an individual basis, the more people that you can get out and vote, the more people that will get out and take part in the campaign, the more people that will contribute financially to the campaign funds of any political party the better. Because this is involving people at the grass roots.

It's something that that government over there knows nothing, or little about. A year ago we asked the Attorney General if he would deny categorically that the car insurance industry had made contributions. This year we asked the Minister of Finance, and the Premier, and neither of them would get up and deny that they had received great copious amounts of campaign funds.

This is the way they like to do business. We prefer to deal with individuals be they teachers, doctors, lawyers, miners, loggers, or come what may. We feel that this is the proper democratic way to involve people in politics. That they give voluntarily a day's pay, an hour's pay, what they feel it is worth to see in this case a better type, and a better quality of education in this province.

I think the attack that this Minister made on his own profession was contemptible, particularly he as a former teacher. Possibly the Minister would like to rise in the future and tell us where the Social Credit Party get their campaign funds from. My books are open, they come from individuals by and large.

Well, on the matter of education, Mr. Speaker, before a trade union can contribute' to our educational fund they must have a two-thirds majority vote of their membership. It isn't someone at the top, it's not just someone writes a cheque — they have to present it at a membership meeting and have a majority vote. And when they have decided to do that then this again is democracy, it isn't being decided from the top down it's being decided from the bottom up. So we welcome the teachers, the loggers, the lawyers, and the miners, and the car salesman and the garages too.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Honourable Member for North Vancouver–Capilano.

MR. D.M. BROUSSON (North Vancouver–Capilano): I thought that with reference to the ad that was referred to earlier today, Mr. Speaker, it was worthwhile noting that the people of Victoria have not had this ad inflicted upon them and it's clear that the people of Victoria or the newspapers of Victoria still go unrewarded by the government.

I thought Mr. Speaker, in view of the very lengthy debate that we've had on this bill perhaps we could fairly briefly summarize mainly some of the arguments that are involved.

First of all despite the Minister's protestations this bill is discriminatory towards the teachers in their salary control. There are only a very few other Professions, other groups, other trades, other kinds of work that are involved in these controls. A few of the M.L.A.s, a few alderman — a few like that, that's all that is involved.

Mr. Speaker, I for one have no very great objection to some form of wage and price control, I think perhaps this kind of thing is needed to control the problems of our economy today. But I find it very distasteful to have one profession or one trade singled out for this kind of control and I find this very, very discriminatory. Second, in recent years, Mr. Speaker, teachers' salaries have not been unduly low. Nor have they been unduly high, they have just been rising, on about on a par with the other trades, and the other industries and the other professions. And this was clearly spelled out in the very first evening of debate on this subject.

Why pick out the teachers if these trades are rising at approximately the same rate?

Third, Mr. Speaker, I suggest that what we are doing has clearly created turmoil in the teaching profession, and in our school system — a bitterness and a hatred that would take a long time to remove.

We've had some talk today Mr. Speaker, about editorials in the Toronto Globe and Mail. Well, let me read you some portions of another editorial from the same newspaper, that had some comments about the kind of turmoil we are developing in the educational system of British Columbia. The headline is "Jungle Warfare in B.C. Schools."

British Columbia is at this time giving the whole of Canada a demonstration of what can happen if there is a failure of reason and moderation in dealings among teachers and school boards and provincial governments.

There is no doubt that the teachers are right, and the trustees are right, when they contend that the government's actions would end any normal negotiations between them. B.C. Is courting the kind of jungle warfare that seems likely to erupt in British Columbia.

Mr. Speaker, as far as I am concerned for the benefit of my children, and the children of North Vancouver, I don't want to see jungle warfare in the educational system, and that's what many of us have said is going to happen and that clearly is what the Globe and Mail, a very responsible newspaper, looks upon what we are doing.

Fourth, Mr. Speaker, what we are doing sets the precedent of completely removing any normal meaningful collective bargaining in this particular field. That was detailed in length the other night, by my colleague the Member from

[ Page 874 ]

North Vancouver–Seymour (Mr. Clark).

Five, Mr. Speaker, if we are going to have annual plebiscites on teachers' salaries, why don't we have plebiscites on a few others — maybe the firemen's salaries, or policemen, or the hospital orderlies, or the garbage collector, or maybe we should have a plebiscite on the B.C. Ferry employees' salaries?

Mr. Speaker, I repeat what we are doing is unfair, and the best evidence I have of this is to quote from the Honourable the Minister of Labour (Mr. Chabot) who says that, "in all fairness the entire public sector of the labour force should be subject to the same wage guideline."

He was quoted by many newspapers and he's been on the radio making exactly the same statements. That's the statement of the Minister of Labour, a member of the government who said that in all fairness these other groups should be given the same kind of treatment. When he got back to town the boss made it clear that that wasn't the case. It was just the teachers, and a very, very small group of other people.

Hardly fair, Mr. Speaker. We had some rather misleading comments the other night on what has been happening to teachers' salaries as a percentage of total educational expense. My recollection is that I think it was the Honourable the Member for Dewdney (Mr. Mussallem) who had some comments about this one.

My seventh point is that teachers' salaries have consistently for approximately 10 years been 57 per cent of the total educational expenditures in this province. If you include capital expenditures. This has been a consistent figure.

Interjection by an Hon. Member.

MR. BROUSSON: I am including total educational expenses, and that is a clear fact. You'll get your turn Mr. Minister. I'm sure the Speaker will eventually recognise you.

Turning to the matter of the 108, 110 per cent, Mr. Speaker, the Minister has said that a crisis exists in educational financing in B.C. And if I recall his exact remarks he said: "Health and education will absorb the whole budget by the end of the century."

Interjection by an Hon. Member.

MR. BROUSSON: Sorry — health, welfare and education, you are quite right, will absorb the whole budget by the end of the century.

Well, let me just give you the proper figures in this regard so that we don't have this somewhat misleading figures that we have been given by the Honourable the Minister.

The educational share of the total budget has remained about the same, year after year after year, for about 10 years, 31 per cent — slightly up slightly down, but no meaningfully different from 31 per cent. So if the budget, the revenue, continues to grow and if the educational share remains 31 per cent year after year into the future — and we have no reason on the basis of past experience to predict that it won't — well then how is this an educational crisis? Maybe there is some other crisis somewhere.

Now, Mr. Speaker, when the Minister was speaking he was waving around. He said, "I've got these bar graphs that we got prepared," and he waved quite a number of them about, bar graphs and charts and so on, he said, "you'll be getting these." But as far as I'm concerned they never have been distributed to any Member in this House. Fortunately I have a copy of them only because I was able to obtain them from a member of the Press gallery.

The Minister was very good about distributing these bar graphs to the Press gallery, but they didn't come into my hands, nor do I think any other Members'.

There are a great many graphs in these, and the graph I wanted to particularly refer to if I haven't lost the place now is one that says: "Can we let this happen?" And he draws a graph here which shows total provincial revenue, and he has a couple of little burnps in this, makes it drop back a little bit and he projects that to 19 8 1.

Now, the other graph on the other side that he's drawing opposite here, Mr. Speaker, it says education, health, and social services. And he has those going up like that and eventually towards the end of the century, actually nine years from now, or eight years from now, he has them meeting.

What I want to do to put this in proper prospective, Mr. Speaker, is to separate the health and welfare from education. Because we're concerned at this point only with education, we're not debating the estimates of health and welfare. We're concerned only with the financial problems of education.

Let's look at those, and we've already said the educational estimates are 31 per cent of the total revenue for the past 10 years. If we add together health, education and social welfare, and take that back 10 years we begin to find where the problem is.

Now we're talking about totals. We go back to 1962, and it was only 54 per cent, and in '63 it was 57 per cent, and then 60 and I will read you the percentages of each year up to the current one: 54, 57, 60, 60, 64, 66, 65, 67, 67, 69, 69, and in 1972, 73 per cent. Truly it is 69 per cent.

But what's gone up? Health and social welfare, Mr. Speaker. And I think this is the clear thing that this Minister has not spelled out — the separation of these two problems. If he wants to control this factor, he better control the budgets of his colleagues, the Minister of Health, and the Minister of Social Welfare. These are the problems financially that we are trying to correct by putting the lid on school costs, or reducing the school costs, because the school costs of the Department of Education have been 31 per cent in every single one of the years that I have mentioned.

Interjection by an Hon. Member.

MR. BROUSSON: That's exactly what's happened. So I hope Mr. Speaker, when the Minister closes his debate on this bill that he will explain how and what he is doing with this bill on education — will somehow make adjustments in the bill on health and social welfare. That's where the problem is and I think we better go to those two departments and control those ceilings, not the Minister of Education's estimates.

Now, point number nine Mr. Speaker. We are making adjustments to this budget, to the school board budget, in the middle of the year. The difficulty is that the school boards started their year effectively last summer. How do you reduce the pupils in March? The pupils were there last September. We can't get rid of them. Their costs are already built into the system in 1971-72. They are already there. The teachers were already hired last summer, we can't suddenly get rid of them. The programmes are under way.

I talked about some of the excellent programmes in North

[ Page 875 ]

Vancouver the other day. Those programmes have been under way since last September. They can't suddenly chop them in the middle of March because they lost their referendum last week.

Mr. Speaker, when this formula was originally brought into this House some years ago the school boards of British Columbia were given an entire year to make their adjustments. Now, I'm the first one to recognise that budgets sometimes do have to be adjusted, and there might be reasons — I'm not saying there are, I'm saying there might be reasons — to say to a school board: "you have got to reduce your expenditures by such and such a time." But let's do that for next year, not for the year we're in the middle of.

Mr. Speaker, I've heard some talk at various times about running a peanut stand. And the government likes to say that the party on my extreme right here has never run a peanut stand. I don't thank the Minister of Education has ever run a peanut stand, but the Minister of Finance has run a number of peanut stands. And he knows perfectly well, the Minister of Finance does, that when you order a year's supply of peanuts you better take the entire order right through to the end of the year. You can't cancel the order in the middle of March because somebody changed the budget on you. You better take it and you better honour the price. So this is not fair. This is not fair, Mr. Speaker, in changing the rules in the middle of the stream.

Finally point number 10, Mr. Speaker. This bill really destroys any real reason that I can see for the continuation of the school board system. The bargaining with the teachers is gone, any real financial control in terms of choices is gone, any real choice of educational policy is gone. All that's left for the school board to do is two things. They will have to find "what's the cheapest thing we can do?" and second, "how can we sell it to the voters?" That's really all they have left. After this bill, Mr. Speaker, I don't think you need local school boards. You could operate with the Minister ofEducation…

AN HON. MEMBER: Oh no, oh no!

MR. BROUSSON: …A few staff members in his department and I suppose a few staff members in each school district to run the show. That's really all that would be needed.

Mr. Speaker, in North Vancouver there was a referendum called for by a petition of voters. The lady who organised that list wrote to the Minister the other day and she sent me a copy of the letter.

I think she's having some second thoughts about what she did. Because she had begun to hear about the lighthouse programme of North Vancouver School District. She discovered the outdoor school for instance, she discovered her son went to that outdoor school. And she was terribly upset because she suddenly realised that one of the lighthouse projects that was going down the drain was the outdoor school and her son was going to be affected. She wrote to the Minister and she said:

"It is my understanding that you've got special funds available to take care of these special kinds of projects that are extra good, and perhaps you can see that they are looked after." She wrote to him and I'm paraphrasing — I haven't got the copy with me in the House. But the Minister I am sure has received the letter. I have a copy of it in my office.

She didn't say she started it, but she was the one. "if this referendum is defeated surely the Minister of Education will find some extra funds." Mr. Speaker, as I understand this bill, and I understand the comments the Minister has made about it, the lighthouse projects are all going to be burnt out.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Honourable Member for Surrey.

MR. E. HALL (Surrey): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The debate on Bill No. 3 has a certain reminiscent quality about it. I remember a debate on Bill No. 33 some while ago that had the same on again, off again quality that seems to fascinate the leader of the House, and to make a mockery of the democracy in this legislation and the rules of order.

Live with it I suppose we must, as long as the numbers game is being played the way it is in this House.

Mr. Speaker, Bill No. 3, as has been said many times, has three principles involved in it. They are the principles that relate to tenure of the school teachers in our province, principles about school board spending, and principles about teachers' salaries. And I want to deal with them simply in that order and hope distinctly to make some points to the Minister that would show him the errors of his ways and the foolishness of his conduct over the past 12 months in matters educational.

The tenure provisions of the bill, Mr. Speaker, have been in the works for well over a year. This principle of tenure has been a subject of a departmental study during the latter part of 1970 and then in the session of last year the subject was referred to the standing committee on education, where an unanimous report was presented to the House just a year ago.

A year has passed since that date, Mr. Speaker, with presumably further departmental studies and presumably observations from the educational sector of our province. Then we saw this bill introduced earlier on in the session to be followed by amendment after amendment, after amendment.

There are, Mr. Speaker, nearly two pages of amendments to Bill No. 3 on the order paper — showing to my mind the pathetic if not alarming state that this Minister has got his draftsman and advisors in.

To think that a simple matter that has been attended to by a great number of people for nearly 18 months will be introduced in this House and then be amended over by the Minister — and they appear as you know Mr. Speaker, on pages 9 and 10 of the orders of the day. When this Minister spoke for the second occasion of second reading he tabled the regulations which are an essential part of the amendments of the bill. Even after he introduced the bill, days after he first spoke he has the temerity and the contempt to the House to table regulations on the table of this House and Mr. Speaker I say to you that that behaviour should not be tolerated by anybody in this House — that kind of leadership in a department.

It makes a mockery out of Parliament. It makes a mockery out of the legislative process. Although it's not technically required, Mr. Speaker, as you well know these amendments should be brought in by message. The least the Minister could have done would be to advise in a total way, the Members of the Legislature and the observers in the galleries, the Press and other people involved with this thing. He could at least have notified them by using the time-honored method of bringing the amendments in by message.

Interjection by an Hon. Member.

[ Page 876 ]

MR. HALL: I do. But it's the certain stealthy quality about slipping them on the order paper, Mr. Minister, that doesn't appeal to me.

The least the Minister could have done, would have been to advise the House and the public and given them the courtesy of putting the amendments in that fashion instead of, as I say, slipping them in like a truant scholar explaining his absence.

The second principle of the bill, Mr. Speaker, and I refer to the school boards' spending, having decided that on this occasion — second reading of the bill — my personal comments about the tenure debate and the tenure provisions are best dealt with in committee.

Dealing with the second principle of the bill, that is school board spending, I'd like first of all to inform the Minister of a letter that I have received from my school board regarding Bill No. 3.

My school board has already seen the Minister on a number of items to do with education but I'd like to read to him a letter from School District No. 36 dealing with this bill. It's expressing the school board's concern over the portion of the bill which deals with the gradual reduction of the money available to it.

For some time past, Mr. Speaker, the tax base in Surrey was low and the district was not able to provide all the materials and services that were available to districts with a much richer tax base and with more money. At a time when the tax base in Surrey is now beginning to improve, to expand, restrictions are placed on expenditures.

Interjections by Hon. Members.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

MR. HALL: The Minister can chuckle as much as he wants but it certainly won't help one trustee in Surrey in view of the negative expressions that have been expressed to that board by this Minister who likens the problems in Surrey to the problems in Fort Nelson.

Mr. Speaker, the point at issue is how does a district like Surrey, situated in the growing part of the province, reach the level of service available in the larger more established districts with this restricted formula, which is now made worse? When we voted against Bill No. 86, Mr. Speaker, we knew it was going to restrict. Now it's even more restrictive. The area south of the river, in Richmond, in Delta, in Surrey and north of the river, where the leader of our party comes from, they're asking now, how can they reach the level of the older established districts?

Both trustees and teachers, the letter goes on to say, will accept the argument that it's necessary to reduce overall education costs.

"We believe, however, that methods of achieving this reduction should have more study." They ask how much study the government has given to increasing the efficiency of the educational process and have some further comments regarding it.

Mr. Speaker, when Bill No. 86 came in I predicted that this would be the eventual outcome of that restrictive formula. I predicted at that time, under the debate on Bill No. 86, that we would force schools to close either by withdrawal of services or by the shortage of money. I also predicted that teachers would go on strike. I was right.

I predicted the facets of this bill would see even more trouble, even more trouble. The Minister has created right now in the minds of the school trustees of our province a simple branch plant administrative factory for education — a department with 89 branches, sub-depots, if you like.

Interjection by an Hon. Member.

MR. HALL: How many, Mr. Minister? Down to 75. We've got a monolithic Department of Education now with these branch plants all rendered impotent by this bill. The Minister, in his speeches and in his Press releases, starting last October, has by inference firmly planted in the minds of the public the thought that the school boards are composed of spendthrifts.

That's what you've done. You've told the public over and over again that money is being wasted, being spent at an alarming level, that costs are escalating, spiralling and out of control. If that, Mr. Speaker, isn't planting within the minds of the public and the ratepayers of this province the fact that the school boards are composed of spendthrifts, I don't know what does.

He's also tried to suggest the public must be protected by this Minister. I don't think I would like to have the Minister protecting me.

But the interesting thing is, the tactics the Minister uses by planting these inferences in the minds of the public are exactly the same as the tactics used by the gentleman who sits to his right, the Minister of Municipal Affairs (Hon. Mr. Campbell), who peculiarly enough has seen fit to enter into this debate which doesn't usually happen when the government introduces legislation. We seldom see cabinet Ministers involved in second reading of bills.

But the Member for Comox (Hon. Mr. Campbell) annually accuses the municipalities of the province of wasting money as well. So here we have two Ministers who deal with the tax base of the province and some of the highest levels of expenditure, both accusing the other levels of government of wasting money. There's a rather inaccurate but familiar expression in this country, "There are three Crowns; Crown federal, Crown provincial," and I suppose, "Crown municipal" — that's exaggerated.

We have the front bench attacking Ottawa. We have the back bench of the treasury board benches there attacking the municipalities and the school boards. That's in line with the political theory of this party that sits in government here, to divide and to maintain office that way.

I can't think of anything that speaks of shabby conduct more than the efforts of those two Ministers to blame and to accuse the duly elected Members of our municipalities and our schools.

Mr. Speaker, the facts — and we've had them now for nearly a month — about educational spending, the facts do not support the necessity for this kind of action as evident in Bill No. 3. The Minister is asking for dictatorial arbitrary powers without proving the case for giving him those powers. His evidence is inaccurate. It's deceptive, because of its use of selective statistics. It's a confusion that's designed to worry and to alarm the parents and the taxpayers of the province.

He says that we have spiralling costs. Yet he produces no evidence that we have spiralling costs. The department, itself, Mr. Minister, shows an increase that could match anything that's in your annual report.

The Minister's office itself shows 100 per cent increase in 10 years. Your own office — you, and the girl, and the dog, and the desk, and the expenses, and the Christmas cards, the whole bit — 100 per cent increase in 10 years. That's 10 per cent a year, that's spiralling, by the Minister's lights.

[ Page 877 ]

Jericho School, a school that's entirely within the Minister's discretion, has gone from an expenditure of $374,000 to $1,147,000 in 10 years. That's a 300 per cent increase. Other figures can be shown, and have to be shown, I think, to deny the Minister's fairy tale about escalating costs.

I think, Mr. Speaker, that the careless use of words, "escalating" and "spiralling," just simply aren't good enough. Mr. Minister, I don't intend to read all these figures out that have come from the trustees and the school boards individually, and the teachers. We all have them. If there is going to be any quality at all about this debate, we needn't clutter it up with that kind of figures.

Let us instead, Mr. Speaker, simply say that because those figures do not prove the Minister's case, then it must be a cover for something else. This whole debate must be a cover for something else.

It's my view, Mr. Speaker, that this Minister regardless of his own personal convictions is to preside over a dilution, a cut-back, and a rationing of educational expenditures in the province, regardless of the brave things he says when he opens schools — and I had the opportunity not too long ago of opening one with him, in which he told us that if we wanted to do certain things we should build- for the future. He told us that the sum total of human knowledge doubles every 10 years.

One of the problems I might add as an aside, Mr. Speaker, the very day he opened the school, tenders were out for extensions to it. But this Minister has been asked by the Leader of this government, obviously, to preside over this dilution, to act as the wake, the chief mourner for this cut-back in rationing of educational expenditures in the province.

It's my view that it's not a question of whether we cannot afford it or not. I don't think the government's even considered that question of whether we can afford it or not. I don't think it's a question of whether costs are out of control. I don't think that enters into the government's mind. It's simply, Mr. Speaker, that the government doesn't want to spend more money on education because it has a low priority, simply because it has a low priority.

The Minister of Industry and Trade (Hon. Mr. Skillings) read an article from Time magazine the other day in which he tried to suggest that the trouble, as evidenced by that article, was here. The Minister of Industry and Trade quoted this current article in Time magazine. The trouble with that Minister is that he didn't realise that the picture that he painted was what is in store for us, not what we've got now. The very article that he was referring to depicts entirely what's in store for us because this bill is what they did in the States some time ago.

When we attempt, as we will have to do, to catch up following the effects that will be ours after the passage of this bill in five or six years time, then the Honourable Minister from Victoria (Hon. Mr. Skillings) will then realise the problem he painted using Time as evidence is in fact the future, not the present.

Mr. Speaker, my school board by your actions will have to see 40 teachers less next September than they currently have. They will not be able to replace counsellors. We know how important counsellors are. The Minister's speech on February, I think it was the 12th, made special reference to the question of counsellors.

In an area that has one of the highest per capita rates of social welfare, in an area like Surrey which has, I think most Ministers would agree, a higher share, a larger share of life's problems than most of the ridings in the province, now no counsellors, no aides, no teachers' aides other than those in the Simon Cunningham special situation. They've done away with markers and the pupil/teacher ratio is up.

That's what will happen to School District No. 36. You've successfully, in my view, taken the stuffing right out of the school board system. You've made them impotent. You talk about accountability. If ever there was a question of accountability, it comes at election time. That's when politicians in the school system and in the municipal system and in our system are held accountable. The Member from Comox (Hon. Mr. Campbell) talked about referendums. The fact of the matter is that the referendum are failing, Mr. Minister, by 1.5 per cent, by 2 per cent. That's a tragedy when you see that kind of thing happen.

In the Campbell River area 44.3 per cent on the last referendum voted yes. The total that voted was 1,961. They were 305 votes short of the 60 per cent required. Yet there were 7,300 eligible voters. Only 26.7 turned out. The Minister didn't mention those figures to us, that represents that area. He didn't mention that kind of turnout. He told us they were all concerned.

But by the very statements that emanate from that Minister's mouth and your seat-mate, Mr. Minister — through you Mr. Speaker — you are confusing the voter, confusing the people by using these excessive words like "spiralling, " "escalating, " "out of control."

The third principle of the bill, Mr. Speaker, deals with teachers' salaries. It's no wonder. Let me just backtrack one second, Mr. Speaker, by pointing out the kind of confusion that exists, not only in the ratepayers' minds but in some of the trustees' minds because of the lack of straight answers from this government.

Year after year, I have asked in this House whether or not this government would share the cost of a sprinkler system in a school. The Member for Little Mountain (Hon. Mr. Peterson), when he was the Minister of Education used to nod his head — used to nod his head and say yes. That was wrong.

The current Minister says "It's in the Act. Read the Act. The trustees know the answer. I've made announcements about that." But the fact of the matter is, Mr. Speaker, that the school boards cannot yet to this day share costs on a sprinkler system for a school with this government. "The school board is asking Education Minister Donald Brothers to reconsider a change in the cost sharing formula that will provide for fire prevention sprinkler systems in school districts' schools. The provincial government does not share the cost. In addition, the board has asked Victoria to devise a fire insurance scheme for the province."

South of the river we've had — I think I'm right in saying, Mr. Minister — we've had more serious fires in our school systems in the last four years south of the river than anywhere else in the last 10 years in the province. The Member for Delta (Mr. Wenman) who's standing over there teaches in a school that's been burned down twice. I don't know whether there's any connection in that but nevertheless, it's been burned down twice.

Queen Elizabeth School has been burnt down. Princess Margaret was on fire. Nevertheless, you will not share in a sprinkler system. I have a letter from the school board — that was a Press cutting I read at first. The letter sent to you on March 15, to the Honourable D. Brothers.

Dear Mr. Brothers,

I've been asked by the board to write to you

[ Page 878 ]

requesting the government to reconsider its position on the installation of sprinkler systems in new schools on a shareable basis. It is the feeling of the board that such installations would not only reduce fire risk but would reduce fire insurance rates considerably.

In addition the board would ask the government to consider carrying the insurance on schools in the province.

I go back to the Press cutting: "Surrey currently spends $120,000 for the protection in its insurance for fire." The move that is referred to in this letter is prompted by an insurance broker's report to the board that stated that they would reduce the rates of insurance by up to 50 per cent with sprinkler installation.

Mr. Speaker, that is the kind of thing that happens out there when you've got this kind of answer to this kind of policy.

The last point I want to make is the third principle of the bill which deals with the control of teachers' salaries. Mr. Speaker, this is a very simple division of opinion between one side of the House and the other and I simply will not accept that it is fair, that it is proper to single out sections of our community for wage controls without it being total, without it applying for prices and profits, without it relating to the whole sphere of our economy. Just simply it is not possible to substantiate, to support intellectually the decision you have made.

The cost of our supplies is uncontrolled, nobody asks any of our companies to justify the price increases that they make. There's no arbitration there. Simply to pick out one sector of society and say to them that they no longer are able to negotiate is in my view probably the greatest thing that separates that party from this — it's the idea of freedom.

Not only that, Mr. Minister — through you Mr. Speaker — but here we have the incredible situation where if a board negotiates with its people and they come up with a figure greater than that which is envisaged by the Minister at any point in time — let's use the 6.5 figure as an example — if it's anything over .6.5 per cent then the district must go to referendum. Another principle that I disagree with.

If it passes, if it does pass, it then becomes part of the overall picture. And if the total figure is then over 108 per cent they've got to go to another referendum.

But even if both referendums pass, and you can see that it is most unlikely, the government still won't pay anything of that portion of the salary that's over 6.5 per cent.

Now that's got to be an absurdity in logic, an absurdity in administration, an absurdity in principle and it is for that reason, and for that reason if no other reason existed — and I think I've covered some — that I couldn't support this bill as it stands at the moment and would take a great deal of pleasure in voting against it, in speaking, against it and politicising it, Mr. Minister.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Member for Burnaby Edmonds.

MR. DOWDING: Mr. Speaker, if no one knew that the government was up to I think the advertisement that was placed in the paper last Friday in the Vancouver Sun, and in other newspapers, disclosed what this bill is all about, and what principle the government is seeking to do.

Without any regard for the real needs for education, without any concern for the quality that will be dispensed to our children in the educative process, the government has determined upon a political course, very simple. I think the explanation is like a confession by the government when it puts an ad in the paper in the nature of the ad that it did to try somehow to arouse public opinion against the teachers, before the teachers have demonstrated that that public opinion should in any way disapprove of the type of protest they have made at the complete illogic of the discussion.

But because the government is embarked on a solely political course, not to solve the problems of education, not to solve the problems of school costs at the local level, it had to put that ad in the paper right in the middle of this debate before we have even got through the stage of voting upon second reading of the bill.

In other words they didn't want the public of British Columbia to hear the debate, to listen to the debate, or to read about the debate. They wanted to precondition the judgment of the people of the province before the matter had even been explored.

I think that is a reprehensible use of this House, and a reprehensible use of advertising. It certainly is a contempt upon the House regardless of what decision may be reached on that matter. It certainly would not be permitted in any court of law.

Now, I have had experience in the field of arbitration boards, particularly in the field of education. And I've sat as a member of a board chosen by one of the disputants on a question of teachers' salaries. And indeed they wanted to discuss other things, working conditions as well which this government has always refused to permit teachers to do — which I think is a departure from civil liberties and the right to a free contract.

But this government has always imposed on the teachers the idea of compulsion, and the teachers have accepted that viewpoint because of the fact they are good public servants, because they are dedicated in the field of education in the needs of their students. They have accepted a restriction that has been placed on them for years, without any audible protest over the arbitration process which I think is an extraordinary self control. What other group in our society has that self imposed restraint?

They appoint one of the members of a board and the elected school trustees charged by this government to represent the taxpayers, and they appoint their representatives. Those two representatives appoint a chairman who they can agree upon. What could be more fair and more in the public interest than determining the question in such an unbiased way, as to what teachers' salaries should be? But this government has decided that such an objective and fair approach to the question is not appropriate. Now, I've been on an arbitration where the amount that we as arbitrators agree unanimously should be was 6 per cent below what we are talking about here, the government figure.

Interjection by an Hon. Member.

MR. DOWDING: No, no. I'm not talking about that yet. That is not the question. The question is who decides 6.5 per cent? When this government is not prepared to accept the same basis for itself, in regards to the taxpayers. Look at what you're proposing in your budget, You want an increase of what? About 13 per cent in the budget?

Interjection by an Hon. Member.

MR. DOWDING: That's not the question. The question is

[ Page 879 ]

you are taking more and more money from the people of British Columbia, 13 per cent more this year. Why don't you cut down to 6.5 per cent in your budget? You know why, you say no increase in taxes. Well, what's happening? The Minister must be totally blind, there's inflation, there's an increase in population, there's a half a dozen different reasons why costs go up and why taxes bring in more money even though the amount of taxes remains the same.

So what you're in effect saying is you want no control over the amount of money you will take from the people but you want to see that the school boards are denied the right to come to a free decision, or an arbitration based upon the facts of life in the vicinity where they are charging for responsibility. Whether it be this school district, or that.

Now, I point out to the Minister that another district next door to the one where I sat in on an arbitration board — where we had found 6 per cent — found 8.5 per cent. Why? Because the situation in that school district was totally different. The needs were such that they had to recommend that increase after hearing all the evidence. But you want the people, without hearing the evidence, who have not been on the board, who have no responsibility for the problem or its solution, without any real chance to study the matter the way the arbitration board does or the school board does, to make a decision on a matter that is really not presented to them nor can really logically be presented to them without the most intensive study and time.

I say it's just as logical for you to put the proposition to the people of the country that they should decide what the budget should be. Should it go up by 6.5 per cent this year, or 13 per cent?

Now you would say that would be derogation of your duty as a responsible government to let the people decide each year what the budget of this province should be. But you know, Mr. Speaker, that the many demands made upon government are also conditioned by the increasing inflation, and the cost of living. But I hear no proposal from this government to fasten any kind of ceiling arbitrarily — 6.5 per cent on the cost of automobiles, on rents, on food, or any other of the items that teachers have to purchase or pay for just as you or 1.

I can't think of anything more discriminatory for you to propose this as a solution to the cost of education. You know, it's all negative. It's "Thou shalt not increase the cost of teachers' salaries. Thou shalt not." And if you manage to do it after an arbitration, after the 108 per cent vote, then you still have to get through other referendums. And after all that's over how are you going to rationalise what's happened?

Supposing you do get through that, this government will not assist in the decision of the taxpayer.

Instead of that negative approach that you followed in this bill, what have you done to explore the ways of cutting costs that are within the grasps of the department of education? Talk about bureaucracy. What you are doing is inevitably driving the school trustees into a position of despair. Because they have absolutely no control over their own decisions in the end results. They're confined, cribbed, and cornered by your policies and by this bill.

You've taken the attitude that was advertised in the paper: "If we get this campaign going we'll get all these people aroused, well get all the teachers out on strike or something." They will not act responsibly in your opinion, and you'll say then well have a good election issue. And I'm not just venturing that opinion — it's obvious from the newspaper ad that you put in the paper, in the middle of this debate.

Now I had response from the parents in my constituency. They sent me a brief. I can sum it up by simply reading these statements in their brief. That's the Second Street School Parent-Teacher brief.

As parents we are concerned with the apparent lowering of our standards of education, and here we cite field trips, below-standard library facilities, inadequate playground area, lack of stenographic help, forcing teachers to do much stenographic work. (They're complaining about it now.)

Two: As working people we are distressed by the recent Bill No. 3 to amend the Public Schools Act which denies the right of free bargaining to our teachers. (A question of civil rights.) If this government is able to put special legislation on teachers, who will be next? (They are quite right, who will be next?)

Three: Locally elected school boards who are paid very little are put in the very difficult position of making unworkable legislation operate.

Four: As taxpayers we are concerned with the ever increasing costs in education. But inflation has hit everything. (They know what's causing this and the Minister should too.) We feel that instead of singling out education to make an example of what we would suggest that our government take a long, hard look at the present financing of education. We adopt the idea that all educational financing should come from general revenue taxation. This would protect our under-privileged segments of society, and our senior citizens and put a greater share on the resource industries of this very wealthy country, and those who are most able to pay.

And then they finish with these words and I think they are very apt, and this is what I think engages our attention on this side of the House. These words:

Our greatest concern is our children.

Where do our children fit in to the scheme of things proposed in this bill? They are going to get less of everything. It's obvious the school boards are having to cut down, already they are having to cut down on the number of teachers. It means they are going to have to do so further to try to lop off this benefit and that benefit. But what use is all that when this government is using the taxation on school costs as a means of hitting the public, the great mass of people?

AN. HON. MEMBER: But we've lost some students.

MR. DOWDING: What's that? Yes, that's true. Our student population is being reduced, and that's happening in many areas. It's obvious that the war boom is over, and if the Minister would only keep his nerve on this question in terms of what the future is going to hold instead of predicting wild, wild, growth of what's going to happen in cost, we could solve this problem with more constructive approaches than merely saying: "Thou shalt not go over 6.5 per cent."

That really isn't the issue. The quality of education, concern for our children, the kind of education that we are going to get, should be the main concern. But we're wrapped up in a bureaucracy, that's one of the problems.

The Minister of Municipal Affairs a few minutes ago was talking here about bureaucratic elements in the schools system, and he was attacking the school trustees as bureaucratic. It is incredible. I wrote his words down, and I found it incredible that this attack could take place on the school

[ Page 880 ]

trustees who are desperately trying to keep within whatever limits they can and still raise some kind of educational benefits to the children of the province. If there is any bureaucracy, the bureaucracy will grow and grow as you in Victoria, and in the Department of Education take over more and more responsibility for education — which you're doing with this bill.

You're saying: "Not only will we look over your shoulder, but move over, we'll sit beside you on the school boards and we'll tell you what to do. We'll tell you how to write your budget in effect. We'll even tell you what you have to cut out." Because it's obvious they're going to have to cut down on various items in their programmes, and you're not willing to help in certain fields as the Member from Surrey points out — even conserving and protecting the schools from fire you're not doing anything.

So I say it is very obvious that this bill is a political instrument, that's all — a political instrument. It is being cynically used to try to achieve an election purpose at some future date assuming that A followed by B and B by C — that's the A + B theory theorem. That's what it is — the A + B theorem and I thank the Hon. the Minister of Labour for that suggestion. It's excellent.

It proves by his own admission that's what the theorem is — the A + B theorem.

Interjections by Hon. Members.

MR. DOWDING: What you do is you exert the pressure on the school boards and the teachers and when you've got the pressure up enough then they revolt. Then when they've revolted you call an election and you say it's because of these revolting people and you attack them. You attack the school trustees then you attack the teachers. And then you attack them both at the same time. Then you attack the trade unions. Then you attack the doctors. There's no one left in society who has one moment of their peace of mind in doing their job decently for the people of the province. I say that that type of approach is now well-known in British Columbia.

You have destroyed the respect many people have enjoyed in the past in their professional fields whether they be doctors, teachers, or leaders of trade unions or any other respective group of the community.

I say, that if you've done nothing else in this bill you've made it impossible for the local school board and the teacher to function. You've done it in a way that I think is despicable because it really means that you're doing it for a political purpose and that purpose I hope and pray will not be achieved when the reckoning comes as it surely will come.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Hon. Member for Atlin.

MR. F.A. CALDER (Atlin): Mr. Speaker, there are several principles involved in this bill, one of which I will mention. That has to do with the tax levies upon the non-Indian occupiers of Indian-leased lands. It's quite an important issue. We just don't hear too much about them but it is involved in this particular Act.

First of all, I wouldn't say that I'm objecting to this because I think you're only trying to rectify an embarrassing situation. But I'm just going to speak generally on it and perhaps even mention one particular protest although I don't know if I'm backing this protest at all and that comes from the constituency from my Hon. friend here, the Member for North Okanagan (Hon. Mrs. Jordan).

But it is a sort of messy situation and I speak generally because no doubt there are other situations in the other parts of the province.

This one just came to light on account of a certain association which was formed in the North Okanagan area. Just to mention a few reasons why this was brought up and to show the Members that such loose terms when people lease Indian lands could become so loose that it creates an embarrassment.

This association called itself the Westside Association, representing the beach renters on the west side of Okanagan Lake and which, of course, is Indian Reserve No. 1.

It says here in a news release that the Westside Association was formed for the following reasons and just to hear some of these reasons would just irk a person that is involved and concerned in Indian-leased lands. This, Mr. Speaker, of course, I'll be relating with the levies for school purposes.

Number one on the list, and this is the reasons for their formation, taxes being levied against some properties only on leased Indian lands which indicates that they were disregarding other people who were supposed to be levied upon the land.

From a total of some 800 cottages on the Indian reserve, only 226 of these were assessed in 1968. No wonder that you have to be retroactive in this, and like I say this is merely to equalize everybody in that area. But there's that discrepancy and it's pretty hard to believe.

Again, I say the reason for this must be no consultations with the people involved and that there were absolutely loose terms on the Indian lease.

There was no rule of thumb for values. The assessments that were levied were not at all consistent with the values of the properties and the association gave an example. In one case taxes were higher on vacant land than a similar property with a cabin on it.

Then another point I'd like brought up, the taxes assessed go back to 1968 for some cabin properties. The majority have still no assessments. The fifth one — the cabin owners were not objecting to paying some sort of reasonable tax on their cabin. Lastly, by forming an association it was felt and of course, they said "we, " that's the association, "would be in a better position to negotiate an equitable solution to the tax situation with the B.C. Government in 1968."

Here's a loose situation, perhaps not with the Department of Education but in the other branches of government has created this embarrassment. So this association was formed to enlighten the public to just what was going on. As a matter of fact it actually went to court.

In October, 1971, the B.C. Court of Appeal gave its decision and in quotation I've got it in here and this is supposed to be from the Court of Appeal.

The result is that taxation by the provincial government under the provisions of the Public Schools Act is unauthorised. The court held unanimously that taxation for general purposes under the provisions of the Taxation Act was valid.

Well, from all of this, one of the renters, no doubt, came here to Victoria to pay taxes. The result was a letter from the Surveyor of Taxes in the city who wrote:

Dear Sir:

Regarding the Okanagan Indian Reserve No. 1. This will acknowledge receipt of your letter of February 22 in connection with taxes levied on non-Indian occupiers of

[ Page 881 ]

Okanagan Indian Reserve No. 1.

The recent court decision to which you refer held that land and improvements occupied by non-Indians or by occupiers of Crown land were not subject to taxation for school purposes in, unorganised territory. As you are aware, this was inconsistent with the practice and policy which has been in effect throughout the rural areas of the province for many years.

In order to rectify the defect an amendment was introduced in the 1972 session of the Legislature.

This now refers to a certain section within this bill.

Summing up the situation the association says that:

The decision by the B.C. Court of Appeal and the three judges of British Columbia will be ignored and nullified. The provincial government has shown no respect for the courts of the land in this matter, and has shown absolutely no willingness to solve the original complaint from the association.

The new legislation means the provincial assessor can go back and access any non-Indian occupier of Indian land back to 1968.

AN HON. MEMBER: Terrible!

MR. CALDER: Not only is it an embarrassing situation. As a matter of fact, you can consider it quite messy and like I say this could be happening elsewhere in the province. I say that the Indian people are quite concerned about this too, Mr. Speaker, because it's the Indian people that are leasing these lands and we'd certainly like to know the terms. I just don't know what leadership they have in this particular area but no doubt they don't know exactly what was in the terms I only hope, Mr. Speaker, that pretty soon this government will table the Stanbury Field report because this was the study made by those people.

AN HON. MEMBER: Order!

MR. CALDER: All about this the school purposes the taxations and everything. I think I'm quite in order, Mr. Speaker, in this because it is a serious situation and the people are leasing lands quite often in this departments and we'd like to see good terms and no doubt your department especially….

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I would ask the Member to come a little closer to the principle of this particular bill. We're not discussing the Minister's estimates.

MR. CALDER: Well, we're talking about the taxes specific for school purposes, Mr. Speaker, and this is the financing. Yes, that's right.

As a matter of fact, I'm just ending. Like I say, I don't know if I'm in support of this. This was to rectify an embarrassing situation. But then it is more preventive measure now. But my only objection to the whole thing is why not a further consultation before a certain section 1s introduced for the public to study and to hear the findings of the Stanbury Field report? This is the reason why we've been asking that that report be filed so that we can all be involved in finalizing a proper management for levies on Indian-leased lands. I hope that the department will take this into consideration.

On the bill itself in terms of the north, I would like to say a few words. This has to do with the cost of living. This past year there's been several towns selected in northern British Columbia in which statistics show a rise in the cost of living. I think the most northerly town mentioned was the City of Prince Rupert. But we have other communities far north of Prince Rupert in which they have a real high cost of living.

This is one of the reasons why you don't get too many teachers going to the north. You always have to do some tan negotiating to get teachers to stay in these remote areas. Of course, one of the complaints is the northern bonuses, if any, are just not sufficient to bring up their allowances to level off with their high cost of living in those northern areas. But now that you've placed a ceiling with no bargaining rights, I mean how can these people talk for themselves if they can reach an organization in these unorganized territories? It becomes most difficult for these people to speak and to tell you their problems.

Now that this has come to light and all teachers know including those to whom they maybe tomorrow wish to go north will not go, perhaps, in fear of the legislation and the effects of it. This may create a lesser number of teachers going north and the difficulty to ask them to go. I think this is quite serious. We already have enough problems with facilities and teachers to teach higher grades and we're having a problem on correspondence. You may say a lot about your correspondence department. It may be that good. But the students certainly don't appreciate it that well.

If we do have difficulties in securing teachers for those outlying areas then you're just creating a whole correspondence system in the far north. That doesn't provide a good picture at all.

Certainly in this respect you're just lowering the standard of education. I think this is quite restrictive legislation, Mr. Speaker. In the past few years we have witnessed quite a number of restrictive legislation coming into this Legislature and this one has certainly taken the cake. It is really a restrictive covenant and I too will be voting against this.

If I don't there will be an end to hearing about this piece of legislation and I do hope that the government will see fit to maybe hoist this for at least a year. Because you've certainly not provided any opportunity for consultations and I think the government should really.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Hon. Member for West Vancouver–Howe Sound.

MR. L.A. WILLIAMS (West Vancouver–Howe Sound): Mr. Speaker, I find it a bit strange to rise and speak on the principle of this bill because in a word it's the most unprincipled piece of legislation that this government has ever produced before this House insofar as the field of education is concerned.

The Member for Burnaby-Edmonds (Mr. Dowding) I think struck a chord which was responsive to me and which bothers me most about the legislation before us — the effect that it has upon the school boards in this province.

As I pondered upon what he said it occurred to me that what we are doing with this piece of legislation is continuing the increasing tendency on the part of this government to dismantle the public school system in this province. You know, Mr. Speaker, in 1958 a commission established by this government under the chairmanship of Dean Chant made an extensive examination into the problem which confronted education in this province at that day. He made some exciting and forward-looking recommendations, some of which this government saw fit to adopt. And if you take the

[ Page 882 ]

report of that Royal Commission and read the epilogue written by the chairman you find, 12 years later, that some incongruous things have taken place. Dean Chant said when he produced the report in 1960 and I quote:

In such a wide flung and sparsely-populated Province as British Columbia regional differences of many sorts are bound to arise and the school system must admit of these. Furthermore the responsibilities assigned under the Public Schools Act to local school boards provides for the recognition of these regional differences. Far from favouring any curtailment of such local autonomy the commission maintains that it must be preserved in order that the schools may continue to be an integral part of the communities they serve.

A bureaucratic school system could enforce uniformity but at the expense of public interest and local initiative. In such a widespread organization as the public school system the danger of over centralization must always be recognised and avoided in order that local responsibility may be encouraged.

Mr. Speaker, in the time that I've been in this House I've been faced year after year with the continuing involvement of the government in matters of a purely financial nature as they apply to our school system. I have heard in debates in this House over the past six years questions about school freezes and the thawing of school freezes, no activity rooms then activity rooms. Then we had the 110 per cent formula brought in, now it's the 108 per cent.

We've heard about public referendum for amounts over the permitted amounts. Now referendum in any event.

We've heard about curtailment of teachers' salaries. Dollars, dollars, dollars. But the real effect of all of these measures which have been introduced by the government over the last six years is to ensure an increasing grasp and control upon the public school system, to localize that control here in Victoria.

Unfortunately Mr. Speaker, the control is not being localized in the Department of Education, in a Minister and his staff — the bureaucrats about whom Dean Chant was concerned. The control is being localized in the hands of the Minister of Finance and his staff.

That's where we fall down. That's why the school system is slowly, methodically being undone by this government. They control what school buildings and facilities may be provided in each district. They control how much may be spent in the operation of the system within those school buildings. And when you've taken that control away from the local area then the responsibility and initiative which Dean Chant said must be preserved is gone, and the school trustees are left with an empty role, and an empty role is not going to attract local responsibility.

Dean Chant said something else in his report and again I quote:

Education is not a mechanical process and the individuality of the pupils does not permit their education to be carried out by fixed rules of thumb. How convenient but how sterile and unprofitable it would be if one could say to teachers do thus and so and you can count upon on such-and-such a result. But life would indeed be dull and unfruitful if people were cast in the same mould. Educators must always have regard for the individuality of the pupils and this precludes the application of any cut-and-dried educational methods. An education system that endeavoured to keep on turning out all the pupils in a common mould would produce nothing but mediocrity.

Mr. Speaker, we heard this afternoon the Minister of Municipal Affairs speak about the situation in Campbell River and Comox and he kept talking about the product from our school system.

The students are not "a product, " Mr. Speaker. We have too long referred to the students as our most important resource. They aren't "a resource." They are human beings. Each their own kind of individual. Each requiring different input from the educational system. The very differences that they require create differences in each school district in each school within a school district in this province. Differences which cannot recognise any fixed-formula application of financial control from the Department of Education.

What is needed, Mr. Speaker, is something that the Minister himself spoke about when he opened the debate on this bill many days ago. I made a note of what he said. He said we had to have leadership in education in British Columbia. He called for leadership from the school boards. He called for leadership from the teachers.

But, Mr. Speaker, what we need in this province — the school boards and teachers look after themselves — what we need is leadership from this government in the field of education. Leadership which has been lacking because leadership has not been given by the Minister. All that has been given by the Minister is financial control designed to result in mediocrity,

AN HON. MEMBER: Depression.

MR. STRACHAN: The lowest common denominator.

MR. L.A. WILLIAMS: The government talks always of dollars.

AN HON. MEMBER: Cut them down.

MR. L.A. WILLIAMS: Take away their right to show any local spark, any local initiative and you cut them down to size — with dollars. As simple as that.

Now I know, Mr. Speaker, that the Minister says "There's no limit to what a school board can expend on operating expenses." And the Minister nods his head. Yes, there is no limit under the laws that you establish. Go to a referendum and you can get all the money you want.

But at the same time as the Minister is saying that, Mr. Speaker, he and the Members of his government have embarked on a conscious programme to insist that education costs are going out of sight. Every action on the part of the Minister of Education with respect to financing has been directed at defeating referenda as they are presented in this province.

Not once has the Minister ever stood up and said: "Please, voters, give the school boards your support. Understand what they say to you about annual budgeting, " Not once has the Minister come forward and given the support and given the kind of leadership that he asks that the school boards and the teachers give in their local areas.

When we speak about the impact of referenda I can only refer to one of the school districts in my constituency which had a referendum last Thursday. It got more than 50 per cent — didn't get 60. The impact of that will take years to assess, but I tell you, Mr. Speaker, that in a school budget in which the school board had already cut the administrative expenses, then a school budget in which the school board had already cut their maintenance expenditures, in a school budget which

[ Page 883 ]

left only instructional costs above what they were the year before we are facing the loss of 38 teachers — 38 teachers!

Yes, it is too soon to know what the impact of that will be. But 38 teachers in my view, Mr. Speaker, cannot help but reduce the quality of education in that school system.

Now, I admit, Mr. Speaker, that 13 were planning to leave at the end of this school term anyway. But an additional 25 teachers will not be brought back to the school system in West Vancouver next September because of the failure of this referendum — because of action which that Minister has taken, because of his failure to take any positive action to show leadership which might encourage the electors in that school district to give the additional moneys the school board was requesting.

What we need, Mr. Speaker, as I say, is leadership from the department in Victoria. We need leadership, Mr. Speaker, to regenerate in this province the attitude that we had with respect to education and its advancements following the days of the Chant Commission.

What we need, Mr. Speaker, from the Department of Education is for them to live up to some of the words which they themselves have produced.

I read an administrative guide to elementary schools. It bears the name of the Hon. D.L. Brothers, Minister of Education, and his deputy. I assume that the Minister has read this.

AN HON. MEMBER: No validity in his attitudes.

MR. L.A. WILLIAMS: Then I'll read it:

A statement of philosophy. Public education in the Province of British Columbia is established in accordance with the philosophy that every child in this province will have the opportunity to develop to his fullest potential not only as an individual but also as a member of society.

Mr. Speaker, I ask the Minister when he closes this debate to stand in his place and tell this House what he has done in the way of leadership to ensure that each child in this province enjoys the opportunity to develop to his fullest potential as an individual and as a member of society.

It goes on, this statement of philosophy:

As an individual he will require intellectual self realization as well as physical, mental and emotional growth and as a member of society he will need some training to make a living and be able to integrate with his cultural surroundings.

Mr. Speaker, would the Minister please indicate when he stands to close this debate what leadership he has shown?

Interjection by an Hon. Member.

MR. LA. WILLIAMS: No, I don't want to adjourn. You'd better come back at 6:05. Mr. Speaker, I draw your attention to the hour.

MR. SPEAKER: I would normally leave the Chair to return at 8:00. I wonder however, whether the House would agree to allow the Speaker to make a statement respecting a matter that arose earlier this afternoon.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Agreed.

MR. SPEAKER: Honourable Members, at the opening of the House today the Honourable Leader of the Opposition rose on a matter described as a breach of privilege, namely, the placing of an advertisement by the government in certain newspapers for the purpose of influencing debate on a bill presently before the House, and moved that a committee on privileges be appointed to consider the matter complained of.

The Chair reserved its decision on whether or not a prima facie case of breach of privilege has been established. I have had an opportunity of examining the advertisement in question and of considering the said motion. I have also given consideration to the arguments advanced by different Members and the various authorities referred to by them.

The general subject of the "privileges" of Parliament and its Members was fully considered by the Chair in a decision recorded in the Journals of the Legislature, 1968, at page 134. I would refer the Honourable Members to that decision and particularly to page 135, which reads as follows:

The 17th edition of May, at page 42, describes "Parliamentary privilege" as "the sum of the peculiar rights enjoyed by each House collectively as a constituent part of the High Court of Parliament and by Members of each House individually, without which they could not discharge their functions…. The privileges of Parliament are rights which are 'absolutely necessary for the due execution of its powers.' They are enjoyed by individual Members because the House cannot perform its functions without unimpeded use of the services of its Members; and by each House for the protection of its Members and the vindication of its own authority and dignity.

"When any of these rights and immunities, both of the Members, individually, and of the assembly in its collective capacity, which are known by the general name of privileges, are disregarded or attacked by any individual or authority the offence is called a breach of privileges and is punishable under the law of Parliament."

In the same edition of May the privileges which attach to Members of Parliament individually are enumerated as follows:

1. Privilege of freedom of speech.
2. Privilege of freedom from arrest or molestation.
3. Privilege of access to the Crown.

In Bourinot's Parliamentary Procedure, 4th edition at page 303, "questions of privilege" are described in general terms as referring to all matters affecting the rights and immunities of the House collectively, or to the position and conduct of members in their representative character.

The power of this House to define those privileges is sanctioned by the Constitution Act, in the Revised Statutes of this province, 1960, chapter 71, and such privileges have been largely codified in the Legislative Assembly Privileges Act, Revised Statutes of British Columbia, 1960, chapter 215.

As explained by Dawson in the 2nd edition of Government of Canada at page 399, the privileges of the individual Member are primarily designed to enable the Member to attend his parliamentary duties without interference and to encourage Members to speak and act freely without fear of undesirable consequences.

I have also examined the Journals and other authorities for any instance in which it has been held that the matter complained of constitutes a breach of privilege and have found no relevant precedent. It is stated in the 16th edition of May, page 47, that while "either House may expound the law of Parliament and vindicate its own privileges, it is agreed that no privilege can be created."

The motion of the Honourable the Leader of the

[ Page 884 ]

Opposition (Mr. Barrett) also raises a question of whether or not a "contempt of Parliament" has occurred. I find in the 16th edition of May, at page 43, that "contempt of Parliament" as distinguished from "breach of the privileges of Parliament" relates to offences against the authority or dignity of Parliament, such as disobedience to its legitimate commands or libels upon itself, its officers, or its Members. Such actions, though often called "breaches of privilege" are more properly distinguished as "contempts."

As the matter raised by the Honourable the Leader of the Opposition does not fall within the scope of any previously expounded privilege of Parliament or its Members, and clearly does not fall within the above definition of "contempt," I must rule that neither a prima facie breach of privilege nor a contempt has occurred.

Honourable Members, I leave the Chair to return at 8:00.

The House adjourned at 6:05 p.m.

The House met at 8:00 p.m.

Introductions of bills.

Orders of the day.

House in committee of supply. The committee rose, reported resolutions, and asked leave to sit again.

AN ACT TO AMEND
THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS ACT

(continued)

MR. SPEAKER: Resumed debate on Bill No. 3. The Honourable Member for West Vancouver–Howe Sound.

MR. L.A. WILLIAMS (West Vancouver–Howe Sound): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Before the recent rising I was saying to the Honourable the Minister that his performance in his department had been singularly lacking in the leadership which people in British Columbia are entitled to expect from this government and from this department — the same kind of leadership which he was suggesting should be forthcoming from school trustees and from teachers in this province.

I was pointing out Mr. Speaker, if you will recall, that in West Vancouver one of the major effects of the lack of success in the referendum to approve an increase of some $216,000 over 108 per cent would be that come September there would be 38 less teachers employed in that school district than is presently the case.

Now there's no question that 13 of those would be disappearing from the school system in any event, but there is an additional 25 teachers who will not be there. The impact that this will have upon the system and upon the school district is rather alarming to contemplate. It is a school district that has ceased the rapid growth that has been experienced throughout the province in this last decade throughout the school system.

In fact, there is some decline in the number of students in the school district. Therefore it, like so many other school districts in the province, would be enjoying a decrease in operating expense budgets by normal impact, by drop in school enrolments. It doesn't need the kind of goading that is coming from legislation such as we've had before us.

But one of the problems, Mr. Speaker, is that in dropping out these additional 25 teachers, 38 altogether, is that the school board has under contemplation closing one school. Closing an elementary school.

Now this may seem like a very astute economic move but knowing the district as I do — it's a long ribbon municipality some 13 or 14 miles in length — to close one elementary school means that there are a number of children who will be accommodated only by transporting them by bus.

At the elementary level this has some serious consequences. The same kind of consequences that are experienced by rural school districts which themselves have special problems — special problems not taken into account the kind of dollar-shaped mould that the Minister is determined to inflict upon the educational system in this province.

There are other impacts as well, For instance, the acquisitions for the libraries in West Vancouver are being debased this year. As far as the teaching staff is concerned, other necessary school supplies are not going to be available — a slow, gradual decrease in the kind of facilities, equipment and material necessary to provide the same standard of education which has been given in past years, let alone attempting to make any improvement in the quality of education in that school district.

This is the future that the Minister holds out for this and other school districts in the Province of British Columbia. This is what we can look forward to under the centralized bureaucratic educational system, which the Minister is designing. And he can pick up his pencil and make all the notes that he wants to make….

Interjection by an Hon. Member.

MR. L.A. WILLIAMS: That's fine — make all the notes that he wants, so that he can respond when he closes the debate. I'm sure that's fine, he's been doing it all afternoon and I suppose we are going to have a long closing debate. You can make all the notes you want, Mr. Minister, but the fact of the matter is that it is quite clear that under the control of the Minister of Finance you are slowly centralizing the control of education in this province into the hands of the Department of Education, into the bureaucracy which last year under the amendments of the Public School Act you gave up to the staff in your department. That's where we're going in this province.

You know, some people will quarrel with the matter of teacher/pupil ratios and say well, it's 23 or 25 and so on. And it doesn't really matter whether the actual number of pupils for which a teacher has responsibility is 30 or 25 or 37 — if you increase the amount by two or three it doesn't make any difference.

But this is because we tend to look at some of the responsibilities in education in a very compartmentalized way. And I want to draw to the Minister's attention a matter which I have raised before in debate in this House, and that is the problem which he also has of educating our young people in respect of the abuse of drugs and alcohol.

Now, Mr. Speaker, consider if you will that the young people in our communities spend six or more hours of their school days in the schools. This includes the hours that they are actually in classes, their lunch time and such time is available to them after classes to take part in extra-curricular activities.

The young people are under the control of teachers for

[ Page 885 ]

that length of time. And when they go home they then are exposed to the advantages or otherwise that may be available to them in their home. They are also exposed to the impact of the fascinations which will attract them from their peer group and the impact from television motion pictures and various kinds of media.

Now, they are exposed through those impacts from peer groups from television, radio, motion pictures, for as great a part of the day as they are in school. And yet when they are in school, the philosophy is to attract that youngster's attention, as the Minister or someone in his department said, to intellectual self-realization and his physical, mental and emotional growth.

Now, I suggest Mr. Speaker, that it does make a very great deal of sense, and it is exceedingly important that the teacher be able to make as great an impact on that student with regard to his physical, and social growth in the school as it is possible.

Because it is there, and there only, that the opportunity of counteracting the influences from the peer group and those others who assail young people, or young people's minds in our community can be made. This is why it is so important that we keep the classes at a size where they can be controlled and that the teacher can get through to that student. Not only the subjects which are proposed in the curriculum, or from the Department of Education but those other influences which a teacher properly trained, properly motivated, can bring to that student.

Mr. Minister, will you take the time to consider the result& that can be gained from encouraging in your school programme education with respect to the misuse, and abuse of these substances which it is your responsibility to do? You will find that the success of those programmes will relate directly, in direct proportion, to the impact that the teacher has on the student and the time that that teacher has with that student.

This is where we are going astray in so many ways. We say that it is a matter of economics, of saving, of reducing costs — we should institute budgetary restraints which have the effect of reducing a number of teachers available in the school district. But when you reduce the number of teachers you have the immediate effect of reducing the opportunity for bringing home to the young people of our schools those programmes which you, Mr. Minister, and your department have the opportunity and indeed the responsibility to bring home to those students.

You can lay out the programmes, you can introduce them into the schools, but if you don't have the personnel in the proper number in those schools then you're not going to make the impact on the student. And that after all is the whole purpose of the exercise.

I'd like to tell the Minister this. The purpose of running a school is not for the school trustees, it's not for the teachers, it's for the students. They are the one factor, Mr. Speaker, that has been overlooked in all of the actions taken by this Minister and by Ministers before him in the dismantling of the public school system in the Province of British Columbia, Mr. Minister, instead of this bill you should be showing the leadership that you're calling for — and one thing that you should be doing is maximize the efficiency of every aspect of the school system, and this includes administrative staff, teaching staff, school trustees, superintendents, and the resource people in your department.

You're not doing it. And in failing to do it, Mr. Minister, you are displaying a consummate irresponsibility in the discharge of the function of your office.

MR. SPEAKER: The Honourable the Member for Esquimalt.

MR. H.J. BRUCH (Esquimalt): Mr. Speaker, despite what we have heard from the Opposition, that supposedly the government is starving education, we can take area after area where rather than being starved some of the school districts have over-built.

We have as an example the Esquimalt Municipality in my constituency where they have over-judged, and over-built. We have a problem right now out in the Sooke-Jordan River area where they over-built, and over-calculated. And it's very interesting, Mr. Speaker, when under the 110 per cent formula, the average was 108. The average was 108, and in bringing it down to 108 we cannot overlook the fact that there are some school districts that are not only operating efficiently but are innovating and trying new measures perhaps more than others and able to operate on 104. And I fail to see where bringing it within reason to the 108 figure should receive the criticism that we hear from the Members opposite, especially when you consider Ontario is going down to 105.

We hear some pretty interesting figures batted about and — , we usually get percentages. And I found it interesting, Mr. Speaker, that when I look at some of the percentage figures, particularly Ontario, it's very easy to start calculating percentage of budget without taking into consideration what is in the budget.

I found in Ontario, for example, that they included in the provincial budget the total educational budget, including the local taxation. But that same budget did not include medicare, and hospital insurance. And so it's very simple to turn figures around, and as the old saying goes, the figures don't lie, but liars sometimes figure.

So when we take this percentage comparison and you can start to bat all the figures about that you wish, we happen to have the highest — qualified teachers in British Columbia of any province in Canada. We have the longest retention of students in the school system of any province in Canada.

You can cut it whichever way you like, the facts are there — that our students are under higher-qualified teachers, our students are able to stay in the school system longer, and the taxation on the individual is lower than it is in most provinces.

Now, Mr. Speaker, it would appear to the Opposition that there should be no restraint put on the public purse whatsoever. And it's interesting when I get the replies to my questionnaire, there are about 85 per cent that are saying that our percentage going into education is getting too high. Are we spending sufficient on education? Sir, you should try it some time and see what kind of replies you're going to get from your individual taxpayer.

But let me put it this way, Mr. Speaker. The B.C. school trustees tell us that average increase in the last 10 years in their circular was below 6 per cent. And so all of a sudden 6.5 per cent becomes a cut when actually it is an increase.

Now, Mr. Speaker, lei's take a look at what 6.5 per cent will do — 6.5 per cent each year compounded will double a salary in 11 years time. Now they tell me from the university it is possible that a girl graduating from university with her total qualification and degrees can begin at approximately $8,000 a year. Now let's just forget the 3 per cent average annual increment for the first 12 years and let's take a look

[ Page 886 ]

at what 6.5 per cent will do.

On $8,000, 6.5 per cent starting at 21 is going to give you $16,000 in annual salary at the age 32. At age 43, it climbs to $32,000. At age 54, it climbs to $64,000 and by the age 65, it'll amount to $128,000.

Anybody with any common sense knows that this type of spiralling inflation cannot be allowed to continue. It would be shirking our responsibility. Just because the federal government hasn't got the guts or whatever it takes to follow the leads that have been taken in the United States of putting a reign on this galloping inflation, then there must be something done.

In this particular field, Mr. Speaker, we have a situation that you have these people including the teachers, including many others, who actually have a certain security. A lumber firm or a logging firm can go broke, a business can go broke, and be eliminated. But they know and we know that in the field of medical services, in the field of welfare, in the field of education, that it must go on and if anything, if the economy starts to tumble then there is a greater call on educational services and medical services and welfare services than ever before.

So these people have a guarantee and an insurance that they are not going to be hit the way the rest of the community can be hit if things get too difficult.

Certainly we have a responsibility and, Mr. Speaker, I would say that the teaching profession, above all professions, should have a responsibility and see that if we continue at the present rate only chaos can result and they would lose all of their pension plans and their structure as they now know it, if this happens.

The first responsibility of the government, of any government — we're finding government after government moving in this direction — is to take a look at the people who are drawing their pay from the public purse and start to show a sensible and concrete example of trying to curb the inflation that will not only harm these people, but will in particular harm the taxpayers, many of whom are on a fixed income and are being bled to death.

MR. SPEAKER: The Honourable the second Member for Vancouver East.

MR. R.A. WILLIAMS (Vancouver East): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think it would be worth while to review a few of the critical points made by some of the Members on this side. I think the Honourable the Member from Burnaby North (Mrs. Dailly) made several worthwhile points that indicate the dimension of the problem.

The point was made, for example, that in 25 school districts where there were overages, in 16 there were no petitions. That's interesting, in terms of the taxpayer revolt that the Honourable Member from Esquimalt (Mr. Bruch) is talking about and that other Members on that side have been talking about.

Similarly, the Member pointed out that there was only 20 per cent turnout in Victoria, hardly a taxpayer's revolt in that instance, either — 29 per cent in Campbell River. No, no, the pattern is clear. There is not the kind of revolt that you're talking about.

lnterjections by Hon. Members.

MR. R.A. WILLIAMS: But the pupil/teacher ratio has been raised, as well. It was pointed out how high ours was, in relation to other provinces.

The Honourable the Minister of Municipal Affairs (Hon. Mr. Campbell) indicated that wasn't important. What he failed to say was that it's extremely important in the lower level grades and that there is research that shows clearly that the lower the pupil/teacher ratio is in the primary grades the better chance of success the child has at that stage.

The question is do you want to lock young people into a system in which they will have less opportunity, since the research indicates that they'll have a better chance if you lower that ratio in those critical early years? Certainly the lower economic groups, the ones that really need to get across that narrow bridge to a better life in our society and try to do so through education, need that additional help at that stage.

Now I have some misgivings about the upper levels. I have not much in the way of misgivings regarding the primary system. I think children learn tremendously at that stage because there's much to be learned in an academic sense at that stage within a system similar to the kind we have now.

The kind of squeeze you're putting on is going to mean a squeeze all the way along the line. It's going to affect the children in those areas that do need the most help now in terms of their future life. That's inexcusable, Mr. Speaker. I think a lot of data has been available. I don't want to go into too many statistics as so much has been reviewed.

But you know, it seems just as a percentage of personal income, public education costs have remained constant over the last near decade. That's a reasonable measuring stick. How much of our personal income is going into this field or the relationship? The relationship in British Columbia has hung around 18 or 19 per cent for a decade.

The kind of spiral you're talking about, in terms of real income, isn't there at all. It isn't there at all.

Again teachers' salaries as a percentage of total school district expenditures, even that area, the one that you people like to beat the drum about, has remained constant again. It was 57 per cent in 1960, that is teachers' salaries as a percentage of total school expenditures and it is 56 per cent in 1969. It's a fairly consistent pattern.

So the spiral you're talking about is only of the nature that the Member from Cowichan-Malahat (Mr. Strachan) indicated, that is new inserts into the system that have cost money. You've parlayed those inserts into a wild graph of geometric proportions.

You know, the newspapers in these local districts abound with the kind of problems that will develop once this legislation is empowered, in effect. The thing is you said it was in effect long before it was legislation. Make them buckle under. The laws of Parliament don't matter. We do everything on this basis, a matter of decree. Parliament's a rubber stamp. The Opposition doesn't matter. Your backbenchers are just lame ducks. They go along with everything so that you can simply say that this is going to be the legislation.

What do they say in North Vancouver, if the referendum fails? What do they say in that district, which has led the way in many ways, like the North Shore generally? They said it would mean laying-off 61 teachers in the district, North Vancouver, the district and city. They said that it means that kindergarten will be the first casualty. There, Mr. Minister, the kindergarten killer. Oh no, they can have a pupil/teacher ratio of 100 to 1 and keep their kindergartens. That's the kind of choices you're giving them. You know, "they don't have to give up their kindergartens."

[ Page 887 ]

AN HON. MEMBER: You're going to have a fire department on your doorstep.

MR. R.A. WILLIAMS: So it's defeated and then what? What kind of way was it defeated in North Vancouver last week? 57.9 per cent voted in favour. They wanted those kindergartens kept. How do you feel about that, Mr. Minister? The fact that the substantial majority of the people in North Vancouver District wanted to pay the money. They wanted the kindergartens, they wanted a better pupil/teacher ratio. 57.9 per cent. That's a far better vote than you people have ever got across this province,

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR. R.A. WILLIAMS: A far better vote. It indicates how the people in that area feel. It means that 61 teachers will go on the block in North Vancouver. It means 35 more in West Vancouver, In a time of unemployment that's real progress — 100 more teachers out of work, just on the north shore in the Vancouver area, 96 teachers.

You people have the nerve to talk about surpluses when it's clear that the levels of expenditures are pretty consistent, that teachers' salaries have simply been keeping up with the general level of salaries in the province. You people have a surplus that you divert into numerous funds and you're unwilling to deal with the real problems of training and educating our children at the critical stage in their lives. You talk about administrative fat. The administrative fat has grown up around you, Mr. Minister.

MR. SPEAKER: Will the Honourable Member please address the Chair?

MR. R.A. WILLIAMS: Through you, Mr. Speaker, the administrative fat has grown up around you in the Department of Education in Victoria, not in the school districts. That's where the real fat lays. We could do without most of that moribund group that you're happy to live with — people that have been out of the school system for decades and decades. I suspect that our school system decentralised without all the bureaucrats that surround you would be far, far healthier than it is today.

Administrative costs average 4 per cent according to your annual report. That's fat? You're going to fight the great battle of inflation that can only be fought on the national level. You're going to fight the great inflation battle by spearing the teachers in British Columbia.

Now that is really Don Quixote over there, really Don Quixote — 2 per cent of the work force in British Columbia — we're going to watch their wages. Inflation in Canada can only be dealt with at the national level and it involves dealing with investment policy generally. It involves dealing with profits and interest and rent. Wages are only one small part of the equation. Despite the fact that the public tends to think that it's a wage push that is the major problem with respect to inflation, it just isn't so. The O.E.C.D. In Europe has indicated in studies of Canada that that just isn't the problem at all, It's more with respect to taxation and investment policy at the national level in this country. So it's not honest to deal with the inflation problem. It's a straight bogeyman that you want to drop on the public during an election campaign.

The Honourable the Minister of Education said, well the answer in places like the Kootenays is amalgamation. Let's bring them together. Let's deal with, what is it he said? "waste, duplication and inefficiency." Let's bring those 11 school districts into two. That is brave new world stuff, brave new world stuff. Let's make two administrative centres for the Kootenays where there are now 11.

What kind of proof in many areas, in yours, and all the others, is there that bigness is more efficient? Most of the studies that I've seen, Mr. Speaker, indicate that bigness is in fact less efficient. It's more a matter of manipulating. You provided no data for this House that indicates that an amalgamation of school districts is in fact efficient, would deal with waste and so on.

AN HON. MEMBER: Hear, hear.

MR. R.A. WILLIAMS: That's not the issue surely, Mr. Speaker. That isn't the issue. Surely the people in the Kettle Valley and in Grand Forks, if they want to determine their own policies as much as they can within the limited scope that you give them with respect to education in their area free from the other areas, say in Trail, then shouldn't they be free to do so? And in so many school administrations across the North American continent they've centralised to a greater degree, removing the small schoolhouses, ending up bussing the kids many miles, the children having to get up early in the morning and get home late at night in rural areas where the roads are rough and where there is deep snow and so on. So they are away from their families more than necessary. All kinds of social questions involved that the local people can best resolve. And a more centralised system will just alienate them more.

Is that the kind of educational system you stand for? One that will alienate the citizens and the students more and more. Because that's the direction you're moving in. You're moving towards greater alienation. That's really one of the great fundamental social problems in our society. The alienation between those affected and the decision makers. The closer they can be brought together the healthier well all be as a people.

But if money is your bag, through you Mr. Speaker, money is everything with this government. Let's look at the money then, since that's the bookkeeping approach of this department. How much money was raised from local property taxes for school purposes in 1972? The figure, Mr. Speaker, $186 million. We deduct from that the home-owner grants, that was $125 million. So 92 per cent then was raised from industrial and commercial property. That left a gap of only $ 10 million to be raised from residential sources.

This $10 million. Is that what we're arguing about with respect to the money end? If there's a taxpayers' revolt or the beginnings of one, Mr. Speaker, isn't the revolt rooted more in the same area as was indicated in Time magazine with respect to a lot of these questions?

Interjection by an Hon. Member.

MR. R.A. WILLIAMS: Well, well deal with that in a moment. The question is the revolt, I'm sure, Mr. Speaker, is centred in the kind of areas that I've pointed to earlier in this session. That's with respect to an extremely bad assessment situation in which there's all kinds of free riders. The average home-owner who does have these school taxes and local taxes knows that his property valuation is improper in relation to the big boys. It's improper with respect to MacMillan Bloedel out here and it's improper with respect to the big developers

[ Page 888 ]

near Kamloops or Kelowna or any of the other towns.

They know that. They feel it in their bones and they're right. That's where the revolt should be centred. If we had I any real leadership, focus would be in these areas of real t abuse, if you wanted to be honest about the real problems that we face.

You can shift this burden to where it should reside with these major land-holding outfits, with the major industrial I concerns that have huge land holdings, with the land speculators around the towns. If they weren't all free riders, there wouldn't be the beginning of revolt amongst the taxpayers.

Who are you protecting? As the Honourable Member for Cowichan-Malahat (Mr. Strachan) said: "How much?" Your answers are on the order paper to question No. 27, from the Member for Cowichan-Malahat. The question was, what percentages of net budgeted operating expenses were paid by the provincial government to each school district as direct grants and exclusive of home-owner grants for the calendar year, 1971? Let's look at them — at a couple of them. In my home area, the City of Vancouver, 20 per cent. I believe that school trustees that are elected consistently in the City of Vancouver — and there's been no major revolt with the respect to the make-up of the school board in Vancouver — should have some say when they're grinding out 80 per cent. They've got to take the flak for what they do.

They want to set up a proper programme — they want to equalize the situation between the east and the west side of the city, something that's really needed. The schools on the east side of the city, the areas of lower income, should be improved. The standards should be raised.

The school district that covers my area has been doing that and I commend them for it. They've been carrying out an innovative programme as well with some excellent people and they should continue doing that. The only time of accounting that they should have is when they come up for re-election — just like the rest of us.

The feeling of the citizens in Vancouver is clear. They still elect most of these people. That's no revolt. If the people are doing a good job they get re-elected and they get re-elected in countless school districts.

If the Honourable the Minister was giving leadership, Mr. Speaker, he'd be giving us real alternatives and he'd be talking about educational philosophy, something that he's never done and something that I expect he's incapable of.

He'd be breaking down barriers to learning — and there are barriers to learning in our society. He'd be opening up challenging opportunities for the young in British Columbia. He'd be looking at alternatives, like citizen teachers.

If you're so upset about the teachers — the accredited group, the B.C.T.F. and all the rest of it, what about alternatives?

I believe that there's thousands of citizens in our society that would make excellent teachers and we should be opening alternative ways for them to play a role in education in our society — augment what we have. But we hear none of that.

There could be on-the-job training. Frustrated workers that feel they have more of a role to play in life could play a role with students as well. The kids needn't be locked in behind those walls within the institutionalized system that you still have to live with. I think they should be outside the classroom more. What we get is indications that they're going to be locked inside the classroom more as a result of the kind of pressure you're putting on them.

There are some great educational critics developing in North America. Paul Goodman in the United States and Ivan Illich in Mexico, who are talking about genuine alternatives to the institutional system. The Minister of Education should be talking about and thinking about those alternatives as well. I could quite frankly, Mr. Speaker, honestly buy a formula system with respect to public schools if we were looking at alternatives. I'd happily see the clamps put on the institutionalized public educational system, if we were providing and thinking about alternatives outside the school walls. That's the obligation. But we don't have that at all.

You're just one more, through you, Mr. Speaker, you're just one more of the captives in the cabinet. One more of the captives of the man who wants the surpluses, the money in the socks under the mattress.

This bill is really one that the Minister of Finance thinks that he can sell to the public. Bill No. 3 is a bill in terms so simple that it's really dishonest and the Honourable the Minister is really nothing more than a front man in the whole operation in the game plan of the Premier for the next provincial election.

It's a simple "hate the teachers campaign" that has begun and the Member for Esquimalt (Mr. Bruch) surely made that clear tonight. It's a campaign that in the end can only hurt the children in British Columbia.

I think we're beginning to see just why the former deputy Minister left. We had an extremely qualified deputy Minister of Education when this man became Minister. I think it's very clear now why Dr. Perry left British Columbia and that is that a decision had been made to play politics with education and there was no place for a top-notch administrator like Dr. Perry.

There is a real need to improve and rebuild and partially break down some aspects of our public education system. But the simple finance formula solution is going to make the schools in British Columbia more of a kind of a strait-jacket for the kids. It'll be an institutional answer. It'll be more of a holding operation; the schools in British Columbia. It'll be a baby-sitting exercise as the number of students increases in relation to the number of teachers. It'll be a system that will stifle instead of stimulate and instead of striking out in new directions, Mr. Minister, you're retreating.

Education, I believe, should be a joy. It could be a joy. One that would pay us rich dividends in the future. Like almost everything else done in this session and the previous session of the Parliament, this government is trying to legislate against the free and open society, Children who must grow and flower in as free a situation as possible, will not be allowed to in the kind of situation that will develop once this bill is law. Instead it's tightened the screw, a more rigid system is going to be the order of the day.

We're going to be locked into an old-fashioned system by a cabinet Minister of extremely modest ability who is determined that his conventional and narrow approach to education will be imprinted on the young people of this province.

This narrow Minister, as we see it, is determined that our educational system in British Columbia should be moulded in his image and that is that it will assure that mediocrity will prevail in the educational system of British Columbia.

MR. SPEAKER: The Honourable Minister of Lands and Forests.

HON. R.G. WILLISTON (Minister of Lands and Forests):

[ Page 889 ]

Mr. Speaker, we've come close to the end of this debate and why we have to deal with the debate on principle with matter of personalities and things of this nature I don't know.

Interjection by an Hon. Member.

HON. MR. WILLISTON: Well, that's fine but that's my opinion. I don't think we have to deal with debates as we're dealing with them — on the matter of personality. I think we can deal with them on the matter of principle. I think there's a real principle involved here right at the present time.

In the first place we've listened to this debate now for hours and we haven't had a real indication in this debate that there is a problem. We haven't had any kind of a real indication that there is a problem. Someone would say: is there a crisis? No there isn't a crisis — and there is not a crisis because it's common sense. There is a problem.

I listened today, I listened to some of the fundamental arithmetic. I've been working this arithmetic since I came out of the field. Unless we have some checks and balances in this proposition, Mr. Speaker, we can talk all we like but in the final analysis those things which we want to have for our children and the people going through an educational system somehow must be paid for in the final analysis.

If we don't take this into consideration at some point along the way then the whole system comes crashing down around our cars. We only have to look across the Canadian scene and the American scene at the moment where actions are being taken on a crisis nature at the present time without adequate planning and when that happens believe me, you're really in trouble.

We're getting the situation now, gradually as we come across Canada, and I predict that by the time all of the budgets are in for this year there will be greater or less evidence of this problem across the whole Canadian scene at the moment.

I don't know what arithmetic other people are using at the moment and I don't doubt it but my own arithmetic as I've used the figures in the last decade consistently and as I use them in my report back to my constituency it shows that since the year 1960 to 1972 the educational costs have gone up approximately seven times — this is across the whole sector. At the same time the revenue coming into the province has gone up about four times and the actual annual increases year by year, the acceleration, has been greater in education than in other matters.

Now the question I ask myself, and I don't have to talk to anyone else because it's serious and I've been into this most of my life, the question I ask myself — how long can you prolong a four by seven split before you're into a real crisis?

The fact is that we're here today trying to discuss this almost with the shock treatment — and I believe it is the shock treatment, because when you talk to people about this no-one really pays any attention to you until the shock happens to get down.

When we debate it, of course we don't debate it on the basis of that real problem that's facing us all both as people and taxpayers — how we're going to sustain and maintain the situation. But we try to make out about the good guys and the bad guys and the guys who hate teachers and the guys who don't hate teachers and things of this nature.

What we should be doing, all of us at this moment, even if we take the most rudimentary look at the figures, is to figure out some of the answers we're going to need if we're going to maintain this type of schooling for our children and our children's children as they come along. Because if you're not searching for answers — at least as a second-hand business, I've searched for answers. I've satisfied myself for a great number of years that that climbing number of pupils every year coming back from the war time boom as it moved through — that was going to be a situation which would be with us for a given number of years and then the increase would start to level out.

If you look at it today the number of pupils are starting to level out and even in some places to go down. But there is no indication in the costs that takes care or even moves with the decline in pupil population or the relative decline in the pupil population. It is still escalating at that same general rate or an increasing rate.

I want to say we must face up to this problem as a people and in some way at least relate towards our income that portion of the income which we fairly spend in education and at the same time look after the other needs of people at the same time so we have a check in the balance. Not sit down at all times and say all of these things are good and therefore we should have them all but we should have them in relation to other things that are going on at the present time.

I shuddered here tonight as an old educator when I came in and listened to people say when you get a unit remember what you're being given — you've got a unit situation, the unit situation contains a teacher, a number of pupils — a whole matter. This is going forth at the present time and somebody suddenly comes out and says with horror, they're going to get rid of 71 teachers. That means that 71 teachers outside of the unit — 71 teachers outside and somebody else says 60. That's 60 teachers outside of the teaching unit.

Now if we're determining priorities you're talking about youngsters in the classroom being taught by good teachers and that business there — and that's the most fundamental business that you should be into. If I take any pride in my background, even in this House, it was for changing the whole system of teacher education in the Province of British Columbia and upgrading it in the years I was here and that's come.

AN HON. MEMBER: Now they're unemployed.

HON. MR. WILLISTON: All right, if they're all unemployed, Mr. Member, there's some of them in there, maybe we never had checks and balances. Let's get back — if you bring this business up — get back say to the days of the Cameron report when they brought in for example the scale on teachers' wages as they went up. They started very low to keep people in the profession for a given period of time so that they would gain as they went in on the teaching scale and stay with the profession in those days and this was one of the added incentives.

What have we done? In the years we've done two things — we've taken that world and we've taken the other world. We've taken that world and telescoped it together and brought it up and we've taken the annual increment so in most cases those people, certainly in those years they're talking about, all take the double increment every year as they're going up. They take the annual increase increment and they take their salary increment as they're going along.

I went back to where I was performing, and you go back even to Prince George and ask them to bring them back some information. I hadn't been at this but listening to this where we're so badly done and so on, I found that in Prince George,

[ Page 890 ]

for example, where I was, and there were 13 teachers there that today are over $20,000 on the Prince George teaching staff — 13 teachers there. There are 49 teachers, for example, in there from $15,000 to $20,000 into the….

Interjection by an Hon. Member.

HON. MR. WILLISTON: Well, that is true, but getting in. But I want to tell you from those principals for example, let's move out just a bit in other responsibilities that go on.

I remember when I moved from the principal of that same school to the superintendent of schools for the whole region, I don't use this as an example, but I dropped $ 1,600 a year in salary at the time when I moved across from the principal of the high school, supervising principal, to the superintendent of schools. My salary went down by $1,600 a year.

I was feeling pretty low until I went and I found that in that whole northern part of British Columbia, the whole northern part of British Columbia back in those years, I was the highest-paid civil servant in that whole northern half of British Columbia.

I took a reduction of $1,600 a year coming out of my position in the high school to join in civil service at that particular time. I was higher from the district forester over a quarter of British Columbia, I was higher than the regional engineer for the Department of Highways all over that part of British Columbia. I was higher than any civil servant by some considerable amount. Then I didn't feel quite so poorly on the whole business. But that's back to another issue.

What I'm saying today, Mr. Speaker, in my pleadings with my own teachers and others as we go up, because someone quotes 56 per cent and so on, but of the controllable expenditures in education when you're down at that level it's about 70 per cent of the total expenditures are on the salary level.

If you're going to get this total bill into some kind of control, if we're going to take a look at the whole thing and look at it intelligently, let's look at the whole field there intelligently as we happen to do it. That's the teachers' salaries and the rest of the matters.

I pleaded with my own teachers and others: "Look, if we're in here this year and looking at it, why not come in and say okay before this goes. Let's go across the board, take a look at the whole thing, come up with some parameters in this general field, and let's go for the 6.5 per cent."

Because as far as I'm concerned, with the employees that I have for my responsibility in Lands, Forests, Water Resources, and others that are on the 6.5 per cent business, when I say that, insofar as my teachers are concerned and the other people who are contributing the basic revenue in the resource field that make those salaries possible in the first place, I say that's a perfectly fair general situation and should be accepted certainly as we try and straighten this out. At the moment they are not in the very poor paid salary situation as of to date.

If we debate this matter, Mr. Speaker, and I'm not going to delay the House tonight, but if we debate this and not come up with the essential issues that were here and set a firm policy so that we can maintain a school system in the world of tomorrow based on sound economics then we're not interested in education. We're not interested in the young people, we're not interested in anything — all we're interested in is politics if that's the business we're doing.

We've got to get that down on to a sound basis that it can be maintained in perpetuity and it's my honest view, it's my honest view that at that level of escalation at the present time — you can say what you like but this happens to be my view and you don't have to put it — but it's my view that we cannot maintain that level of escalation into the future without bringing some parameters into it.

The present formula that the Minister has, and I've been in and through many formulas, I'm willing to state anything, that there's not a better formula. I haven't seen nor heard of a better formula that's at work at the present time. The trouble with that formula in part is that it had no checks and balances.

Each year it took into consideration every cost that went into education. That became part of the total cost and when you divided it you got a unit cost. Therefore, if there were no controls on it, it kept going and going. That became the base next year and without any controls that became the base the next year until sooner or later from your unit cost position without any control factors in there, you were in real trouble.

This year, I don't know of any formula anywhere that automatically takes into consideration the increases in number of staff, the increase in classroom units, the increase in teachers, the increase in all of these, it's automatically worked into the formula. Certainly in my day we never had anything like that. I can remember when we had the original salary schedule. How foolish we sometimes can be.

I came before this House and advocated at the time the salaries grant schedule should be placed at the mid-point of the salaries schedule. I was just too dense. I thought that in fairness that the salaries schedule should be put at the mid-level. You know how long it lasted there.

If it lasted two weeks, it was absolutely the longest period it lasted because everybody immediately from that point moved their salaries from that position to the salaries grant schedule 1mmediately. Now when my colleagues came in for this matter of setting 110, when that was carefully worked out in the original instance, people weren't at 110. They put 110 up there. People were all the way from 105 to 110 and someplace around 107 and 108.

Immediately upon him putting the 110 in there, everybody who hadn't built their business up to 110 immediately started to hike right straight to 110 or there because it was the average. His average was actually below that at about 108. They immediately pushed themselves through the ceiling and that's human nature whenever you happen to do it.

But the check and balance in this situation has to be there. If it's there, and it works, it will maintain a proper educational balance in the Province of British Columbia.

I don't want to talk about tenure. But as an administrator, nobody's talked about this and it's in the bill. But the changes in tenure, insofar as I am concerned, teachers I have talked to are first class and very much improved to anything we've ever had in the business before.

Interjections by Hon. Members.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please! The Honourable Member for Cowichan-Malahat.

MR. STRACHAN: The Minister misled the House perhaps inadvertently in his comparison between 1961-1971 figures. The 1961 figures did not include the home-owner grants in the education costs and the 1971 figures do, which puts your ratio completely wrong, again misleading the people of the

[ Page 891 ]

House and of this province.

MR. SPEAKER: One moment, please.

HON. MR. WILLISTON: Mr. Speaker, those figures — I published them and the Honourable Member had a copy of my speech, asked for a copy of my speech, they were in there. He's taken all this time tonight to come up for them. They were in there at the time, they were still there. He's never debated them until this evening here. But I say this again, for the costs that are put towards that amount, they were my costs — I gave them. If you don't wish to have them, that money has to be found in subsequent years as we're moving along, as they go up.

MR. SPEAKER: The Honourable Member for Saanich and the Islands.

MR. J.D. TISDALLE (Saanich and the Islands): I only have a few comments I'd like to make in respect to this learning process in education we've had here on this bill. Speaking to the principle of the bill, it has mainly two principles in it. One of which is tenure. I watched with a great degree of interest as it was formulated in the committee last year. I am glad to see it incorporated in this bill in such a fashion that the teaching profession, I'm sure, will be happy with the administration of it as they have indicated.

I think it brings to mind a point of view in respect to the other aspects of the bill too. We tried in the committee in respect to qualifying and upgrading the teaching profession — which they were most interested in — to resolve that situation by the use of the peer method.

I think it is equally of importance to see that when it comes to the costs of education, those things that the taxpayer is affected with, that he should have the same rights of tenure, to take a look at the cost of education and be able to say among his peers, "this is what we are prepared to buy or pay for." This is not legislation against teachers although we see it is a political battle here on the floor of the House. This is a legislation in favour of taxpayers and of the people.

This is not a legislation by discrimination but it is legislation for democratisation which is again turning the process of democracy back to the people. It may be only a very elementary, a very basic element, but at least we say to the peers of taxpayers among themselves "you have a right to determination by a democratic process." We believe that this is not centralisation of authority but really a decentralisation of authority.

We are coming back in a full circle of a grass roots responsibility to taxation and the costs of education. I don't think that's to be deplored. I think that if anything should hearten and encourage people today, it is the fact that once more democracy is seeing that to control itself, it resolves itself best around the discipline of the individual to make a choice.

Some people say that this government does not want to listen. But more and more this government has turned the choice back to the people. It won't be very far away, maybe, until the people will have a basic opportunity again to make a decision. This government has never been afraid to allow the people to decide things. I think that's the main element and criteria in this bill. I support the principle of the bill.

MR. SPEAKER: Are you ready for the question? The Honourable the Minister will close the debate.

HON. D.L. BROTHERS (Minister of Education): Mr. Speaker, my closing debate today concerns remarks of the second Member for Vancouver East (Mr. R.A. Williams). If all his figures are as accurate as his one on the home-owner grant, he's very far off the mark indeed. Because as I recall, he said the home-owner grant was $125 million. On checking the records, I find that the homeowner grant for this year is $72,570,000 so that he's precisely $52,500,000 out.

On listening to both the N.D.P. and the Liberals talk about this bill, I can only conclude that they feel that they're not particularly concerned about the fact that education grants to school districts and school district budgets have gone from $117 million in 1962 to $347 million in 1971. They don't seem to be concerned that teachers' salaries have gone from $78 million in 1962 to $242 million in 1971.

Listening to the Member for Yale-Lillooet (Mr. Hartley), he just seems to say, "just allow the thing to go right out of control. Spend whatever the school boards seem to want and require to operate the school system."

The Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Barrett) made some statements about the teachers in Fort Nelson. What I said concerning the teachers in Fort Nelson was I was praising them for showing some leadership for saying: "Let's hold down our increase. Let's provide the balance to continue on or improve the system, " Their intention was to keep five teachers on the staff. I commended them for that. I thought most highly of them that they did, in fact, do that.

I noticed that in a newspaper article recently in St. Louis, the teachers in the Lindberg school district had turned down proposed $100 yearly pay boosts. Instead they asked that the money be used to hire more teachers and guidance counsellors.

The Leader of the Opposition was talking about the distortion. When the Member from Oak Bay (Mr. Wallace) was mentioning about a percentage decline, I was asking him: what about the dollars? Of course he wouldn't tell us what was happening to the dollars. Naturally, because it wouldn't help his case at all. But I noticed that even from the statistics of the B.C. Teachers' Federation, he would like to leave the impression that while the percentage is decreasing, the dollars are decreasing. Naturally, naturally.

Well why didn't he tell us the dollars when I asked him? The fact of the matter is that the expenditure…

Interjections by Hon, Members.

HON. MR. BROTHERS: …on elementary and secondary education from 1962 was $83.9 million. It has, in fact, increased to $285.6 million in that period of time. Yet, you go along blissfully and allow the House to believe that there had been decline in dollars.

Interjections by Hon. Members.

HON. MR. BROTHERS: Talking as well about distortion, may I quote from a letter by the president of the B.C. School Trustees' Association to Mr. Adam Robertson. This has to do with the other graph that has been discussed from time to time in the House. That was the one comparative wage structure with the teachers' salaries compared to it.

The letter was dated March 17. It was a letter from the president of the School Trustees' Association to the president of the B.C.T.F., Adam Robertson. He says:

Further to our conversation and the exchange of phone calls between our two staffs, I feel I must register

[ Page 892 ]

with you in the strongest possible terms my objection to the use made by the federation of editorial material from our publication Education B.C. In your current advertising campaign.

The masthead of Education B.C. states that the material may be reprinted without permission but I believe there's a vast difference between editorial reprinting and using parts of the material in an advertisement. I also feel that, in view of the highly political nature of the advertisement, someone of senior rank in the B.C.T.F. should have sought permission to use the material in this way.

However, had permission been asked, I might as well tell you that it would have been refused. There's a strong implication from the format of the advertisement that the B.C.S.T.A. Is backing the federation in its campaign. Teachers are being scapegoated for the lack of sound government education policy. We both know of the numerous mutual interests and purposes that our organisations share and warmly support, but as I have stated publicly on more than one occasion in the past few weeks, the association opposes certain sections of Bill No. 3 for our own reasons, which may not coincide with the federation's. Also that the B.C.S.T.A. Is not prepared to join with the B.C.T.F. In an attack on the government.

In addition, treatment of the editorial material is quite unethical, bordering on the dishonest, when one realizes that there have been editorial changes in our copy without indicating where these changes had been made.

The convention is to show by closing quotation marks where a quote ends. Someone responsible to the federation has eliminated the first paragraph and part of the fourth paragraph without anything to show that the reprinted material is not a continuous quotation. Also in the fifth paragraph, this person has inserted emphasis which was not in the original. These practices, incidentally, have been noted in the B.C.T.F. Newsletter in previous occasions. But we have not formally registered our protest until this time.

Well, I'm talking about distortion. Now let's talk for a moment about this graph that was, in fact, used. I again say that this graph is not accurate.

First of all, it doesn't take into consideration on the teachers' portion the 3 per cent average annual increment that goes to the majority of the teachers. and as well, the portion dealing with the graph comparison of the average weekly wages, this series covers the wages paid to employees in establishments employing 20 or more persons. Only 55 per cent of all employed persons in British Columbia are included in this survey.

Coverage is most complete in the mining, manufacturing, construction and transportation sectors where unionization is highest and where wage increases have been the greatest during the past decade. Coverage is lowest in the service sector where rates of pay are lowest and where the wage and salary rate increases have also been the lowest.

This statistical series, therefore, should not be used to represent the wage and salary performances of all workers in the province, and should clearly not be used to represent the service sector in particular.

I would like to also make some comments on the Leader of the Opposition's statement about a penny a day cost and that he doesn't understand why we're concerned about these additional costs. Now in looking at the budgets that exceeded the 108 per cent. Vancouver exceeded the 108 per cent by $961,000; North Vancouver $185,000; West Vancouver $226,000; Prince George $184,000; Greater Victoria $411,000; Campbell River $254,000. Now, of those groups alone and they're the ones that were above 108 per cent, rather these make up $2,800,000 and that is above the 8 per cent. The local taxpayer has to pay the entire 8 per cent plus these additional costs. That can hardly be termed as pennies.

AN HON. MEMBER: Tell us about all your research.

HON. MR. BROTHERS: I'm of the opinion, the same as the Minister of Lands, Forests and Water Resources (Hon. Mr. Williston) that this is the best finance formula in existence in Canada.

It allows for an increase in the units. It allows for an increase in the educational costs each year. It also allows for an increase in the number of students. No matter what form of a formula you look at you must look at the individual cost per student. The Member for Cowichan-Malahat (Mr. Strachan) I thought made some reference to the Quesnel School District in particular and I made a point of looking up their increase in their grants and they've been substantial in the last three years.

In his own area he was talking about Nanaimo, Ladysmith, Cowichan, and Lake Cowichan. He was saying that they were required to reduce special classes. I notice that in school district No. 65 we went through this during my estimates. In fact their approved special classes have increased from last year to this year. School district No. 68 has also increased from last year to this year.

He mentioned that the kindergartens would have to be shut down and I think it was the Member for Surrey (Mr. Hall) who also mentioned the same thing. There's no need for them to shut down kindergartens because the finance formula provides for kindergartens and provides for special classes. There's no need in the world to shut down the kindergartens. Absolutely none at all.

Interjections by Hon. Members.

HON. MR. BROTHERS: For the Member for Atlin (Mr. Calder) and also the Member for Cowichan-Malahat I don't think you've been around to see many schools in the province. You were mentioning that this formula really discriminates against the rural districts. If anything it helps the rural districts of this province. Surely you wouldn't want to go back to the time of the Cameron report or even the time of the Chant Commission because the Leader of the Opposition said the last time he went around, I believe was in 1966….

Interjections by Hon. Members.

HON. MR. BROTHERS: The situation is changed substantially. In your own area you said when you….

MR. BARRETT: I said the last time I represented Agassiz was 1966.

HON. MR. BROTHERS: Yes, and you travelled up and down. You took a look at the schools in the area at that time.

Interjection by an Hon. Member.

[ Page 893 ]

HON. MR. BROTHERS: In the interim the situation has changed a great deal.

Interjections by Hon. Members.

HON. MR. BROTHERS: You can go anywhere in the province today and find excellent schools, well constructed, well equipped schools with the highest-qualified teaching staff in Canada.

The Member for Kootenay (Mr. Nimsick) also mentioned some sort of an article that said teachers in his area were second-class teachers, second-class citizens. I did take a look at the statistics on teachers' salaries and I find that they come in second alright. They're the second highest paid in the Province of British Columbia.

AN HON. MEMBER: Second to what?

HON. MR. BROTHERS: The highest paid was West Vancouver.

AN HON. MEMBER: That's a rural area?

HON. MR. BROTHERS: The Member for Surrey (Mr. Hall) is critical because I brought some amendments on the floor. Then the Opposition are very critical when amendments are suggested to us and we don't in fact make amendments. Then they say we're autocratic and arbitrary.

The first amendment on the teachers' tenure was made as a result of meeting with the B.C.T.F. and meeting with teachers. They pointed out an error and I corrected it.

Interjections by Hon. Members.

HON. MR. BROTHERS: The amendment on the finance formula of the 108 per cent was brought about as a result of meeting with the school trustees' association and they pointed out an error that obviously was there, and I corrected it. Now, what's wrong with that?

In conclusion, I'm a great believer in the board system, the school board system in the Province of British Columbia. I think it was the Member for North Vancouver-Howe Sound (Mr. L.A. Williams) area who said that we would have great difficulty in getting people to run for school boards. There was an election here in Victoria just 10 days ago and there were six excellent people who ran for the school board and there'll be no difficulty at all in getting people to run for school boards of the province.

I believe, however, that they should be viable. The Liberals and the N.D.P. both were talking about regimentation and yet when you ask them why they didn't come out with what kind of a system they would advocate they say take the taxes off the land. Then that would mean that all the moneys for education would come out of general revenue. That would mean that the local taxpayer would have no say in the matter at all. There's be absolutely no need for a local school board.

Then under the N.D.P. or the Liberals there certainly would be regimentation. So, Mr. Speaker, I believe that this is good legislation and I have a great pleasure in moving second reading at this time.

Motion approved on the following division:

YEAS — 30

NAYS — 17

PAIR

Second reading of the bill.

Bill No. 3 ordered to be placed on orders of the day for committal at the next sitting after today.

Hon. Mr. Bennett presents the 33rd annual report of the Public Utilities Commission for the year ended December 31, 1971.

Hon. Mr. Bennett moves adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 11:27 p.m.